After a thriller last season that saw Oakland Catholic defeat Blackhawk with a basket in the final 10 seconds, the Eagles and Cougars met again Saturday for Class 4A\u2019s WPIAL championship.<\/p>\n
Oakland Catholic won its eighth WPIAL championship and second straight by knocking off previously unbeaten Blackhawk, 51-44.<\/p>\n
The Eagles never trailed despite a big push in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
In a first quarter where the Eagles shot 8 for 10 from the field, their press helped turn the sharp start offensively into a 12-2 lead early, then a 20-6 edge after eight minutes of play. Senior Josie Fontana, a Richmond commit, pulled down six rebounds and scored nine points in the stanza, while five Oakland Catholic players scored.<\/p>\n
Senior Aubree Hupp scored four of Blackhawk\u2019s six points in the first but was 1 for 6 from the floor for a team that shot 2 for 13 from the field in the first.<\/p>\n
The second quarter was anything but like the first for the Eagles (21-2), but the defensive effort remained similar. Oakland Catholic shot just 3 for 11 but held Blackhawk to eight points to take a 26-14 lead to the locker room for the break.<\/p>\n
Fontana finished the half on pace for a triple-double of the tough variety with 13 points, nine rebounds and five blocks.<\/p>\n
After a tough first half, the third quarter became the Aubree Hupp Show. The Canisius recruit had seven points on 2-for-10 shooting in the first half but did have nine rebounds. By the end of the third quarter, Hupp had a double-double of her own to join Fontana in that department. The Cougars\u2019 four-time WPIAL finalist had 15 points and 11 rebounds after three quarters.<\/p>\n
Thanks to that production, steady effort around her and a big four-point play by senior Grace Huston that made it 31-30 with 2:27 left in the third, Blackhawk (22-1) made a game of it in the stanza and trailed 37-33 heading to the final quarter.<\/p>\n
Oakland Catholic weathered the storm, however. With the lead cut again to 37-36 by a Hupp free throw, the Eagles used a 3-pointer by Savanna Daye and another by Zephaniah Troxler-Scott 37 seconds later to catapult back ahead with a 11-0 run before a Hupp layup stopped the scoring drought for the Cougars at 2:20.<\/p>\n
Fontana finished with 20 points, 15 rebounds, six blocks, two assists and two steals, while Troxler-Scott contributed 12 points and five steals to the winning effort.<\/p>\n
Hupp scored 20 and grabbed 14 boards for the Cougars as the only Blackhawk player to reach double figures.<\/p>\n
The championship also pulled Oakland Catholic into a tie for third most in WPIAL history with three other teams, including Blackhawk.<\/p>\n
The PIAA playoffs begin for both teams March 7. Oakland Catholic will play District 10\u2019s fourth-place finisher Corry while Blackhawk will play D-10\u2019s third-place team, Fairview.<\/p>\n
This story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a thriller last season that saw Oakland Catholic defeat Blackhawk with a basket in the final 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-198532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}