By Joe Simon
New Castle News

Shenango High girls basketball coach Brian Turk had seen this act before, and he didn’t like it then either.

His girls took an early lead last night in their nonsection showdown with South Side Beaver, but watched it slowly slip away. He wasn’t about to let it continue this time around.

The Lady Wildcats made some halftime adjustments and battled through foul trouble and injuries in a 41-34 victory over the Lady Rams.

“That’s one thing we’ve been struggling with — we usually have a dead period somewhere in the middle,” Turk said. “One thing we’ve really been talking about is that we have to come out and not be dead, especially since we led the entire first half until the end. They were up 20-19 at the half, but we led up until the last few minutes. They got pretty hot in that second period and I didn’t want them to carry that into the third.”

They didn’t.

Shenango (1-2) held the Lady Rams (1-2) to 14 second-half points and used a balanced scoring attack to retake and maintain the lead. Jenna Petrucci scored a team-high 14 points and Skylar Andrews netted 10 and grabbed a team-best 11 rebounds, helping the undersized Lady Wildcats hold a 38-29 rebounding advantage. Six of Shenango’s eight total players scored in the final two quarters.

Turk said the Lady Wildcats have been decimated by injuries and lost another girl to an illness yesterday.

“When you have eight girls, it’s definitely a total team effort,” Turk said. “We had one girl foul out, one with four fouls and three with three fouls. But we changed things up and had a different plan in the second half, and the girls responded.”

Samantha Gibson led South Side Beaver with 14 points.