Two outstanding seasons by Lehigh Valley basketball teams came to an end Tuesday night at Pleasant Valley and at least there wasn\u2019t the heartache of losing at the buzzer or on some kind of controversial call or a player\u2019s mistakes.<\/p>\n
The Executive Education girls and Salisbury boys were overmatched in a PIAA second-round doubleheader.<\/p>\n
Dunmore dominated the Raptors 58-20 in the Class 3A girls opener.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Salisbury hung around for a half against Scranton Prep, but a 9-0 run by the District 2 champs to start the third quarter put the Falcons in a 20-point hole and ultimately, they fell 57-42.<\/p>\n
The Executive girls finished their first season under former Bethlehem Catholic coach Jose Medina with an 18-8 record and the program\u2019s first district title.<\/p>\n
The Salisbury boys finished 24-5, giving veteran coach Jason Weaver, the most wins in his career and the program got its first state playoff win since 2001.<\/p>\n
Dunmore domination<\/p>\n
The Lady Bucks led 12-1 after the game\u2019s first six minutes, 18-3 after one quarter and 39-6 at halftime and the mercy-rule went into effect for the second half.<\/p>\n
Freshman Janessa Martin and senior Amanda Dempsey both scored 14 points. Leena Conte and Jackie Brown added seven apiece for Dunmore, which improved to 24-3 and will play Hughesville, the District 4 champion who beat Notre Dame-Green Pond 42-30 Tuesday night at Berwick.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to see players on film and know what they\u2019re really like,\u201d Dunmore coach Carrie Toomey said. \u201cNo. 1 for them [Mariah Hargrove] looked really good on film. So we really focused on her and wanted to take her out of her game. We played our best basketball today from the start and we haven\u2019t been doing that from the start. We started off the game strong and gained more and more confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toomey said her players made very good decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about that because against Mount Carmel we didn\u2019t,\u201d Toomey said, even though Dumore prevailed 36-33 in the first-round game. \u201cWe broke that down a little bit and talked about what your options are when you\u2019re being double-teamed and where to look. Leena Conte did a really good job of that tonight, but everybody did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunmore has an interesting makeup of its roster with several older players and a lot of freshmen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have seven seniors and eight freshmen and in between, I only have one junior and three sophomores,\u201d Toomey said. \u201cBut I really believe this team is getting it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she thought her team could bring back the big prize from Hershey\u2019s Giant Center on March 19 as they did in 2023, Toomey said, \u201cAnything is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you believe and work hard and things have to fall right,\u201d Toomey said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been there before. Things have to go our way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dempsey was a freshman on the 2023 state championship team and also believes three wins is very possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew being a leader was going to be my main role on this team coming into the season, especially with all of the young talent we have,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the beginning of the year, it was hard to mesh with two separate groups. But now that we\u2019re into it, our leadership has been great. Jackie Brown and Leena Conte are two of our other seniors who have worked hard to lead by example and include everybody on our team. Now, we\u2019re playing like one cohesive unit. We\u2019re pretty well right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunmore lost in the first round of the state playoffs in 2024 and in the second round last year, but Dempsey sees a team that wants to keep winning for three more games. She saw it three seasons ago and is seeing some similarities with this group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re motivated by our losses [including a 52-40 defeat to Easton on Jan. 24] and we want to keep pushing and take it all the way,\u201d she said. \u201cI think talent plays a big part in teams winning games, but at this point of the season we have so much heart and so much dedication and want-to. It\u2019s going to be hard for teams to knock us off just because of how we want to win. We have the skill, but a lot of teams have the skill. We really want it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medina, who led Bethlehem Catholic to state titles in 2017 and 2019, also wants to return to the biggest stage in Pennsylvania basketball.<\/p>\n
But he also understands that he had a young team with just one senior this season, and several injuries didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very proud of our girls; it\u2019s a very resilient group here,\u201d Medina said. \u201cWe picked a bad day to have a bad day, but you\u2019ve got to give Dunmore credit. That\u2019s a great team and a great program and for us it was great to see that up close. For our girls, it plants a seed. It\u2019s great when things are going wonderful, but you have \u2018brought back to reality\u2019 type games and we had one tonight. You need that sometimes, but I am proud of these girls and brought of their effort. They\u2019re still champions and that\u2019s something we\u2019ll take into the offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Executive will graduate just one player and will have everyone else back next December when another season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get healthy because we had some injuries,\u201d Medina said. \u201cWe\u2019ll attack the offseason and ways we can grow stronger together as a unit. Tonight is what it looks That\u2019s where we want to be. It\u2019s great to be able to compete in the Lehigh Valley, but ultimately, our goal is to compete at this level. So, we\u2019ll use tonight to better ourselves going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medina said he has found a home at Executive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got great kids, a great community, a great staff and great support,\u201d he said. \u201cBob Lysek [the school\u2019s CEO] does a great job over there and our AD [Stephen Rivera] is wonderful. I am proud to be there, the kids are proud to be there and we\u2019ll keep building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunmore 58, Executive 20<\/p>\n
Executive 3 \u2013 3 \u2013 7 \u2013 7 \u2014 20<\/p>\n
Dunmore 18 \u2013 21 \u2013 11 \u2013 8 \u2014 58<\/p>\n
EXECUTIVE (20)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hargrove 4 1-2 12, Rios 0 2-4 2, Bush 1 0-0 2, Rosa 0 0-0 0, Henry 1 0-0 2, Riddick 1 0-0 2, Green 1 0-0 2. Totals 7 3-6 20.<\/p>\n
DUNMORE (58)<\/p>\n
Janaya Martin 2 0-0 4, Janessa Martin 6 0-0 14, A. Dempsey 5 4-4 14, Conte 3 0-0 7, Nidoh 2 2-2 6, Brown 3 1-2 7, Walsh 0 2-2 2, Steeves 0 0-0 0, Brier 1 0-1 2, Mendola 0 2-2 2, King 0 0-0 0, McGowan 0 0-0 0, M. Dempsey 0 0-0 0, T. Walsh 0 0-0 0, R. Walsh 0 0-0 0. Totals 22 11-13 58.<\/p>\n
3-pointers: Executive 3 (Hargrove 3); Dunmore 3 (Janessa Martin 2, Conte).<\/p>\n
Scranton Prep-Salisbury boys story to come<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two outstanding seasons by Lehigh Valley basketball teams came to an end Tuesday night at Pleasant Valley and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[29375,305,178,180,179,726,432],"class_list":["post-135060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-high-school-basketball","tag-high-school-sports","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}