By Andrew Koob
New Castle News

NORTH ALLEGHENY — Saturday marked the postseason return of the Ellwood City Lincoln girls basketball team after a 17-year hiatus.

The Lady Wolverines didn’t have a lengthy return, though.

Ellwood City looked overmatched in a 50-40 WPIAL Class AAA preliminary-round loss against Ford City at North Allegheny.

The Lady Wolverines held an early 7-4 lead but the Lady Sabers, particularly senior Christina Davis, broke open the scoring for Ford City. The guard sparked an 13-4 run, scoring nine of the Lady Sabers’ points during the run to take a six-point advantage into the second quarter.

The Lady Wolverines (12-11) tried to get Ford City out of a comfort zone early, using a full-court 1-3-1 zone to put pressure on Davis. That never materialized as Davis, who came in averaging just over 15 points per game, poured in a game-high 28 points, 15 coming off of 3-pointers.

“The one day she couldn’t be off,” Ellwood City coach Jolene Servick said. “And we knew that, we knew she was a good shooter and she was their only pure shooter. No one stepped up and took her out of her game, they just kind of let her lay back in that corner where she hit them all.”

Ellwood City trailed by as many as 15 points in the final quarter, but Jocelyn Guy hit three consecutive treys to bring them back to within seven points. Turnovers and the Lady Sabers’ success at the charity stripe ended Ellwood City’s season.

Only three Ellwood City players recorded a basket, as Guy finished with a team-high 18 points. Karington Ketterer and Bailey McKinney added 11 each.

The new setting proved to be too much for the Lady Wolverines. They battled back in the second half but dug themselves a hole in the first half that had them trailing by 13 points heading into the break.

“I’ve never seen these girls so quiet in my life,” Servick said. “Unfortunately, we always seem to use the first and second quarters to kind of get ourselves in the game. In a playoff atmosphere, you can’t do that. You’ve got to play solid all four quarters. It’s all new to them and they had no idea what to expect. But it won’t be anymore. Now we’re here, now the juniors know and next year will hopefully be a different story.”

The Lady Wolverines were hoping to apply constant pressure with their zone defense, but it turned out to be Ellwood City feeling the pressure. Ellwood City turned the ball over 24 times, with Ford City (18-3) racking up 12 steals.

“We’ve seen it a lot this year in the games we’ve struggled with Hampton and Mars,” Ford City coach Al Davis said. “That’s what they did to us so, every since that, we’ve been working on it. They did better getting rid of it. You’d like to see someone flash in that middle a little bit more, but they had a great game.”

Added Servick, “I don’t know if they were well-prepared, we just did not execute it the way we told the girls to. We knew (Davis) was a shooter and we practiced it. They just didn’t talk to each other and know where she was. They had no clue where she was, I think we would’ve been fine had we executed it the way we practiced it.

“We didn’t follow our gameplan. We had to go back to man-to-man, which we really didn’t focus on in practice.”

The Lady Sabers, who moved up from Class AA this year, move on to play Chartiers Valley 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at North Catholic.

(Email: A_Koob@ncnewsonline.com)