By Rich Stevens
In a scrum of loose balls and scrambling basketball players, Morgantown emerged again in a rivalry of West Virginia big school teams two hours apart.
The top-seeded Mohigans continued their march toward a third consecutive title with a 57-49 victory over No. 4 Parkersburg South (21-6) in the semifinals of the Class AAA state girls high school basketball tournament on Friday.
Morgantown (24-1), which has lost just twice since the 2013-14 season, has a championship game date with the winner of the Huntington-George Washington game at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday.
The victory was the seventh in the last eight meetings between the teams. In fact, one of Morgantown’s only two losses the last two seasons came to South. The other one came to South Charleston, which was seeded third but eliminated by George Washington on Thursday.
Parkersburg South coach Scott Stephens doesn’t anticipate as many games with the Mohigans next year when South changes regions when the reclassification takes effect for the 2016-17 school year.
“We’re switching from north to south, so we probably won’t see them as much as we have in the past,” Stephens said. “We’ll have to pick up Huntington, Hurricane, Spring Valley, teams from the southern part of the state that we normally don’t see.”
That could be a welcome change for South, which hasn’t managed to solve the Morgantown defense, averaging 39.5 points in the four meetings this season.
On Friday, the Patriots (21-6) were plagued by mistakes, turning the ball over 24 times, including two key miscues late – the first coming when they were down three with 3:15 left and down four with 1:38 remaining.
Senior Sydney Holloway answered the last turnover with a field goal for a six-point lead, and South didn’t get any closer.
Holloway had 13 points, five rebounds three steals and two assists. Two of the other three Morgantown seniors – Rachel Laskody (14 points) and Paige Poffenberger (14) – combined for 28 points, 11 rebounds, seven steals and three assists.
“That’s what happens when you have four seniors on the floor,” White said. “Kids who have been in two championship games. Syd has been in four semifinals, it’s not new to her. She’s traveled the east coast on the AAU circuit. I thought Paige did a good job, coming back and wanting the ball, and Rachel knocking down her free throws.”
Poffenberger played 29 minutes, but left the game momentarily after colliding with South’s Carlie Wilson in a game which she said the “harder fouls” were let go.
“It didn’t feel very good when it first happened, but I wanted to come back in and play harder,” she said.
Anna Hayton had 14 points and six rebounds for South before fouling out with 1:48 remaining.
