Fallston steals page from Williamsport's playbook by playing stronger defense

ROCKVILLE, Md. — The Williamsport girls basketball team met its match.

For the entire season, the Wildcats used their defense to fortify their offense. The stingier the defense, the better the offense looked.

On Wednesday, Williamsport’s best bets were matched and raised.

Fifth-seeded Fallston stopped the top-seeded Wildcats in their tracks with physical play and superior rebounding to claim a 50-41 victory in the Class 2A state semifinals at Richard Montgomery High School. The Cougars (22-4) will face Hereford in the state championship game on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the University of Maryland Xfinity Center.

“Give Fallston a lot of credit,” Williamsport coach Kevin Murphy said. “They were ready to play. The physicality of the game in the first half really got to our kids.”

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After Williamsport opened with a 4-0 lead, the Falcons started to put a vise grip on the Wildcats’ offense. Fallston led just 8-5 after the first quarter, but held the lead throughout, turning Williamsport one-dimensional with only one shot at the basket in each possession.

Here are five reasons why Fallston was able to end Williamsport’s first state final four appearance since 2016.

Shooting blanks

For the second straight game, poor shooting kept the Wildcats from putting up a stronger fight.

“Two poor shooting games in a row, and then we were chasing,” Murphy said about falling behind early. “We didn’t want to put the ball in (Paige Smith’s) hand that much in the third and fourth quarter, but when you’re down, you are trying to put the ball in your best player’s hands to create.”

Smith, usually a sharp shooter, was off the mark most of the night as Fallston forced the junior into a number of uncomfortable shots.

The Falcons took Smith out her comfort zone, which only became worse as time started getting away from the Wildcats.

For the game, Smith scored 31 points on 10 of 38 shots from the field. The rest of the team was 3 of 17. Kamryn Seltzer had eight of the other 10 points.

That many shots for Smith showed Williamsport was really trying to run the steady attack of Fallston down.

“We don’t like to do that. We’d rather run our stuff and run sets,” Murphy said. “In the first half, we did. We ran a lot of sets. We just didn’t get good shots — give them credit again — and then we didn’t get a second shot. We were not efficient on the offensive end the whole game.”

The Wildcats were 13 of 55 shooting (23.6%). That comes on the heels of an 8-for-51 night (15.7%) against Liberty in a quarterfinal game the Wildcats pulled out 33-30 last Saturday.

That’s a 21 of 106 (19.8%) in the last two playoff games.

Turning the ‘Paige’

Fallston seemed ready for Smith, defending the junior with one, two or three defenders in various times.

Smith drew one Cougar when bringing the ball up, two when she was moving into shooting range and nd three when she took the ball inside.

The Falcons weren’t going to let Smith beat them.

“We had a good balance in the first half with all the kids getting shots and touches, but in the second half, (Smith) took the most shots,” Murphy said. “We were chasing (behind) and we put the ball in her hands.

“We have about five sets that she runs off of those screens, and to be honest with you, she took some shots that weren’t the best. But she didn’t have a lot of movement around them. Our kids kind of froze at times. Again, give (Fallston) credit for that. They made us work for everything.”

The Cougars limited Smith’s scoring early and withstood a hot streak late.

Smith had one point in the first quarter and finished with seven in the first half. She scored 24 of Williamsport’s 29 second-half points, including 17 of the Wildcats’ 22 fourth-quarter points, which produced a short-lived comeback try.

Serving early notice

Fallston grabbed the game after the early 4-0 deficit.

The Cougars were a bigger, stronger team. In fact, one of Fallston’s inside players had the nickname “Bruiser” on the bottom of her warmup jersey.

In short, it wasn’t the type of game Williamsport was used to playing. The Wildcats’ wins were dictated by their defense and rebounding.

“We made some mistakes and they were the much stronger team in the backcourt,” Murphy said. “They outrebounded us like 20-5 in the first half, and we didn’t get an offensive rebound, so credit them and their defense for putting a body on us. They were probably the most physical team we played all year.”

Fallston’s defense took away any easy transition opportunities for Williamsport. A lot of that came from Cougars point guard Jillian Crawford, who controlled the game while scoring a team-high 22 points.

“We didn’t run any transition because they did a great job of getting back,” Murphy said. “Their point guard is really good. She might be the best player we faced all year. … She’s solid. They made us work for everything offensively and they did a great job.”

Last chance

The Wildcats, who trailed by double digits in the second half, got back to within 42-36 after a Smith basket and some their best showing of defense of the night.

A trapping defense caused a few turnovers in the backcourt and started to shift momentum, but Fallston had an answer.

“The biggest play of the game came when we were down six,” Murphy said “There’s probably four minutes to go in the game. We’re in the half-court trap and we’re deflecting the ball. We’re doing a good job and the trap is working.

“They got a shot in front of their bench that came off our hands and got loose. They get it, get it to (Crawford) and she hits a 3. If we can secure the ball, we could come down the floor and cut it to four or three if we hit a 3. Right there, we couldn’t rebound when we needed to.”

Bitter end

Williamsport completed a season of promise that was lined with land mines.

The Wildcats had a strong returning group, but many breaks didn’t go their way, despite going 18-2 in the regular season.

“We are flawed in a lot of ways,” Murphy said. “You see our flaws. We are not the typical Williamsport team that is deep and everything else. We lost some kids. But the kids we have here never gave in. You saw in the fourth quarter we weren’t giving in.

“They weren’t giving up they didn’t quit, and that’s a testament to our group. They never did give up all year.”

In the end, the flaws caught up with Williamsport.

“That’s why we are so upset in that locker room,” Murphy said. “We overachieved. For what we went through with injuries and losing two key pieces this year and not having everything together at the end of the year, we definitely got to the farthest point. … I didn’t think we would get this far.

“We just lost to a better team tonight. Fallston’s better. They were just better than us, I’ll be honest with you.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Williamsport girls hit brick wall in 2A semifinal loss to Fallston