Spadafora, DiMichele guide OLSH past Karns City into PIAA semifinals

By: George Guido
Saturday, March 20, 2021 | 5:11 PM

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District 9 champion Karns City rolled into Our Lady of the Sacred Heart’s Angela Activities Center Saturday with hopes of finding the rhythm that had led to 23 Gremlins victories.

Instead, OLSH’s lockdown defense ruled the day as the Chargers blasted Karns City, 75-45, in a PIAA Class 2A boys basketball quarterfinal.

Dante Spadafora scored 23 points and had six steals while fellow senior Jake DiMichele poured in 20 points as OLSH (22-0) is now one step from a trip to Hershey and Friday’s state championship. The Chargers will play Portage at home Tuesday in the semifinals.

The Chargers defense forced 22 Gremlins turnovers and held Karns City (23-3) scoreless for 6 minutes and 17 seconds of the second quarter.

With the score knotted at 5-5 early, a 10-second violation against the Gremlins led to turnovers on four straight possessions to fall behind, 13-5. Karns City, however, stormed back to trail 17-16 before Spadafora’s 3-pointer gave OLSH a 20-16 lead at the quarter break.

Chase Beighley’s 3-point shot with 7:02 left in the half cut the Gremlins deficit to 23-20, but Karns City wouldn’t score again until Nathan Waltan’s basket with 45 seconds left in the second quarter ended a 17-0 Chargers surge.

“We changed up our defense to see if we could do something against Waltman,” OLSH coach Mike Rodriguez said. “What a wonderful athlete he is. We wanted to see if we could pressure him a little more in the high post, and we pressured the ball more on the perimeter and it worked for us.”

“We just made too many mistakes to hang with them,” Karns City coach Chris Bellis said. “We needed to play mistake free. They made it hard to get Nathan the basketball because of their defense. We never got any type of rhythm.”

Waltman, a senior, finished with 21 hard-earned points.

Spadafora’s basket with 1:09 to go before halftime gave OLSH its first 20-point advantage, 40-20.

“Whenever the ball was taken to the top of the key, we tried to double it on the wings and it resulted in some turnovers, in the third quarter, especially,” Rodriguez said. “We then extended our pressure to a full-court instead of a three-quarters court press and that helped us tremendously.”

The third quarter was more of the same as DiMichele’s steal with 5 seconds gone in the third quarter and another bucket off a turnover later in the frame gave the Chargers a 62-30 lead and put the continuous clock rules into effect.

Spadafora suffered a mild knee injury in the third quarter, but stayed in the game.

DiMichele had six rebounds and Dawson Summers six rebounds and five blocked shots.

Beighley finished his Gremlins career with 12 points, giving him 1,697 for his four seasons, becoming Karns City’s all-time leading scorer.

“Right now we’re going to enjoy the cool of the night and not think about basketball,” Rodriguez said. “Let the boys enjoy it and then get back to practice for our next opponent.”

OLSH’s only other state title game appearance came in 2018 when the Chargers lost to Philadelphia Constitution.

Tags: Our Lady of the Sacred Heart