By Rich Stevens
The top-seeded Morgantown High School girls basketball team halted another opponent, holding Spring Valley to 20.5 percent shooting on Wednesday night in rolling to a 55-30 verdict in the Class AAA state tournament quarterfinals at the Charleston Civic Center.
The Mohigans (23-1), who are surrendering just 31.9 points per game this season, allowed the Timberwolves (15-11) only two points in the third quarter, those coming with 18 seconds left.
The victory sends Morgantown to the Class AAA semifinals at 5:30 p.m. Friday against the winner of the Thursday’s 11:15 a.m. quarterfinal between No. 4 Parkersburg South and No. 5 Martinsburg.
“When you go long periods of time against a good team without scoring it makes it hard,” Spring Valley coach Larry “Bo” Miller said. “It looks like we were stuck on 15 for a long, long time.”
For more than nine minutes from the second quarter to near the end of the third, Morgantown’s lead ballooned from nine points to 26.
“We haven’t played a lot of zone,” Morgantown coach Jason White said. “We play a predominant man to man. I tried to sell zone to these guys the last two or three weeks. We’re long and we can cover ground pretty quick. I think we recover really well. It’s not easy to attack our zone.”
Morgantown actually had one more turnover than Spring Valley, but scored 12 points off the Timberwolves’ miscues. However, the Mohigans have held 11 opponents to 30 points or fewer in winning all but one of its 24 games this season. Morgantown’s only loss came to South Charleston, the tournament’s No. 3 seed, at the Shootout at the Big House.
Sydney Holloway had 11 points and 11 rebounds and was one of four Morgantown players with three steals. Lydia Adrian had 18 rebounds and Paige Poffenberger grabbed 13 of Morgantown’s 55 boards. Karlee Alderman had 10 of Spring Valley’s 30 rebounds in the loss.
