Peters Township opens new facility with sloppy win over Canon-McMillan

By: Don Rebel
Friday, February 12, 2021 | 11:02 PM

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Everything was awesome for the much-anticipated opening of AHN Arena at the new Peters Township High School. Everything that is, except the play on the Indians’ play.

“They found some ways to make some winning plays down the stretch,” Peters Township coach Joe Urmann said. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

Urmann was not happy with his team’s play to begin a new era of Peters Township basketball, but they did enough to edge Canon-McMillan, 51-45 on Friday.

The Big Macs remained winless, falling to 0-7 in Section 2-6A and 0-10 overall. The Indians routed Canon-McMillan by 18 points Jan. 19 on the road.

“I think the facility is excellent,” Urmann said. “I think our play was less than excellent, but we’ll take the win.”

Peters Township trailed for nearly all of the opening quarter until senior Logan Pfeuffer hit a turn-around desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Indians a 15-12 lead.

The Indians slowly started to find their rhythm on offense and built the lead to 29-19 at the half.

Instead of fading the in the second half, Canon-McMillan came out strong and scored the first five points to cut their deficit in half.

The Big Macs got a big lift from junior Gavin Miller off the bench. He got to lose balls and hit some big 3-pointers to give Canon-McMillan a chance at that elusive first victory.

Down by eight points with three minutes remaining, Canon-McMillan scored five straight to cut the lead to three. Miller and junior Laymont Lyons had two open 3-point shots in the next minute to tie the score, but both just missed. The Big Macs would get no closer.

On senior night, Peters Township relied on a pair of seniors to lead the way as Pfeuffer and Julian Mascio scored 10 points each.

“I can say without hesitation that I have three really good ones,” Urmann said of Pfeuffer, Mascio and James Garcia. “They are really selfless guys that are very coachable and do the right thing. They’ve done an excellent job in leading in action and in words.”

Miller scored a game-high 13 points — all in the second half — off the Canon-McMillan bench. Senior Malachi Meredith added 11 points for the Big Macs.

The win improved the Peters Township record to 4-1 in the section and 5-6 overall.

In a season in which Section 2 teams will not play their full section schedule because half the teams are adhering to a strict mask rule while others are not, Urmann realized the overall record and body of work is probably more important when the committee gathers in 10 days to put together the open playoff bracket.

“Obviously, the committee is going to have to go to some sort of power ranking it seems and put teams in there based on their nonconference records and who they played and how they played,” Urmann said. “I think we played a really tough schedule, and every game is a chance to prove yourself to the committee. We’re just going to try to control what we can.”

Tags: Canon-McMillan, Peters Township