Girls primed for playoffs
At this point in the season, Southern Columbia, Lourdes and Shamokin are as good as undefeated.
The truth is that all three are in the District 4 playoffs and just like Line Mountain and Mount Carmel (who we'll look at closer in Wednesday's edition) are hoping to add up the wins in the playoffs.
Southern Columbia, which finished the regular season at 19-3 and repeated as champs of Division III of the Heartland Conference, faces South Williamsport tonight at 6 p.m. at Danville.
Lourdes also finished with a 19-3 regular season mark, losing twice to undefeated Tri-Valley, and is the No. 2 seed in Class A. The Red Raiders play Mansfield, Friday at 6 p.m. at Montoursville.
Shamokin will be the last of the area teams to take the floor in the playoffs after it finished the regular season at 17-5 and also repeated as HAC division champs in Division I. The Indians will play the winner of the Shikellamy and Selinsgrove game next Tuesday at a site and time to be determined.
All three are seeded high and expect to make some noise.
Southern Columbia
The Tigers got a tough draw to start the playoffs with a South Williamsport team that beat them earlier in the season, but Southern has improved since then.
"We've worked hard all season," head coach JoEllen Gallinot said. "Because we played them earlier in the season I'm so much more confident. We don't have a lot of height, but our small girls are rebounding like crazy."
The Mounties boast the best player in the field in Tierney Pfirman, but South Williamsport is beatable.
Southern Columbia is led in scoring by Kayla Lavella with 15.4 points per game, and she scored 21 in that early-season matchup with the Mounties.
Lourdes
The Red Raiders are looking to win their fourth consecutive district championship, but may have to do so without their biggest star.
Junior Christina Perles, who is just 95 points from reaching 1,000 for her career, suffered a thumb injury in the Red Raiders' final regular season game against Minersville. The extent to which she could or could not play Friday won't be learned until sometime today.
It's hard to believe the Red Raiders would be the same team without Perles, who is averaging 14.1 points per game this season, although head coach Mike Klembara likes the way his team is responding.
"We have some people coming in off the bench," Klembara said. "Ali Singh and Rachel Schultz are playing well. We're trying to think positive. The rest of the team is healthy and they recognize the task at hand."
Shamokin
The Indians have a two-week layoff to contend with before they step onto the court, but that could be a big benefit for a team that only uses about eight girls on any given night.
Who the Indians will see when the wait is over is anyone's guess. They'll get the winner of Friday's Selinsgrove and Shikellamy quarterfinal game.
Whoever makes it out of that game should expect to see the same Indians' team that has beaten both those teams already this year.
Steph Pancher leads a very hardworking team with 11.5 ppg, and they all have something to prove after a quick exit last year.
"This is the hardest working group I've had in a while," Indians head coach Bill Callahan said. "They're fighters and competitors and that's a credit to their parents and my assistants."
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