01/08/24 Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski / Juniata Valley's Amelia Russell and Bellwood-Antis' Olivia Hess battle for a rebound.

By Michael Boytim

mboytim@altoonamirror.com

BELLWOOD — Two high school girls basketball teams with plenty of recent success at both the district and state level met Monday night trying to find themselves under new head coaches.

The difference in Bellwood-Antis’ 53-35 victory over Juniata Valley came from beyond the 3-point line where the Lady Blue Devils outscored the Lady Hornets, 33-0.

“The lid came off for us,” Bellwood-Antis coach Kyley Longo-McGarvey said. “We started shooting the ball well, and we had a lot of people involved offensively. That’s definitely what we want with seven or eight kids getting into the scorebook for us. It opens things up for us and gets people in a rhythm. We feed off our 3-point shooting. I would like to see us get to the rim more, but that’s something we will have to get used to.”

Bellwood-Antis had eight different players make a 3-pointer, and the Lady Blue Devils made five in the first quarter while jumping ahead, 20-5.

Lilly Gerwert led a balanced scoring attack with 11 points as B-A improved to 7-4 in its first season under Longo-McGarvey after Jim Swaney’s retirement last May. Swaney, with Longo-McGarvey as his assistant on the bench, led Bellwood-Antis to PIAA championship wins in 2018 and 2019.

“I love Coach Swaney. He taught me a lot, and I respect everything he did,” Longo-McGarvey said. “I coach slightly differently, but I still have some of the same philosophies he had. For me, it’s more of getting the kids to see me in a head coaching role instead of as an assistant, which has been a little bit different. For the most part, we have had a smooth transition and thrown in some new sets, but we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bath water. The kids are adjusting well.”

Swaney, who was in attendance at Monday’s game, also has played a big role in mentoring Juniata Valley’s new coach, Elizabeth Radabaugh, who played for him when he coached at Tyrone.

Radabaugh was hired at Juniata Valley relatively late in the offseason and didn’t get the chance to spend the summer with her team.

“It would have been nice to play as a team over the summer,” Radabaugh said. “Some of the girls worked hard over the summer individually with their travel teams, but for us to be able to play as a team so I could get a better feel for our capabilities — some girls really have improved since last year and some girls were in junior high last year — so it was hard to have a grasp of what we were getting started with. Once we got that time together, we have backtracked some and set a better idea for what our goals are going to be.”

The Lady Hornets, who played in back-to-back PIAA championship games in 2017 and 2018, got a game-high 13 points from Anna Taylor and 10 points and eight rebounds from Maddie Hopsicker. They also forced Bellwood-Antis into 30 turnovers but couldn’t finish many of the offensive opportunities that came from those.

“We worked a lot on our zone defense this week,” Radabaugh said. “I think that is really going to work well against some of these teams. They came out with a hot hand and hit all those 3-pointers to start, which some of those you can’t do anything about, but I feel like we had good closeouts and good communication on defense. That was really key, and I’m pretty pleased with that. We just need to be able to make the layups at the end. We had a lot of mildly-contested layups that we need to finish.”

Olivia Hess made Bellwood’s 11th 3-pointer of the night with 2:20 to play in the third quarter to put the Lady Blue Devils up by 30 and start a running clock before Juniata Valley carried the fourth quarter, 11-0.

“We have work to do,” Longo-McGarvey said. “I want to see us become more physical without fouling.”

Longo-McGarvey said she has had to make some adjustments despite being familiar with the B-A program.

“There are a lot more responsibilities and things you have to look at,” Longo-McGarvey said. “It’s certainly harder. When you are an assistant sitting on the bench, you have the luxury of seeing the floor, keeping the stats and watching the flow of the game. As a head coach, you have to watch the ball, know what offense you want to run and know what the other team is doing. You have your eyes on a lot more. That starts with listening to your assistants, and that’s different for me.”

For Radabaugh, who saw her team drop to 3-7, it’s about learning on the job.

“Sometimes you can’t play the game the way you want to. You have to base it off the players you have,” Radabaugh said. “I had a lot of ideas of the types of offense and defense that I wanted to run based off what I thought I knew about the team watching some last year, and we have done a lot of tweaking over the last few weeks — all good things. It has been a process for me, and the girls teach me new things every day, basketball related or not, and I’m enjoying the process.”

JUNIATA VALLEY (35): Hopsicker 4 2-5 10, Foster 0 1-2 1, Russell 1 0-3 2, Taylor 5 3-6 13, Watson 1 7-8 9, Sunderland 0 0-0 0, Harman 0 0-0 0, Anderson 0 0-0 0, Mowrer 0 0-0 0, Sager 0 0-0 0. Totals — 11 13-24 35.

BELLWOOD-ANTIS (53): C. Hammond 2 2-2 7, Clapper 2 0-0 6, Gerwert 4 2-3 11, Norton 3 0-0 7, Quick 1 0-0 3, Cacciotti 3 1-1 9, Hess 1 0-0 3, Worthing 0 1-2 1, Bardell 0 0-0 0, Waite 0 0-0 0, P. Hammond 2 0-0 6, Hassler 0 0-0 0, McNelis 0 0-0 0, Campbell 0 0-0 0, Wagner 0 0-0 0, Dickinson 0 0-0 0. Totals — 18 6-8 53.

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Juniata Valley 7 8 9 11 — 35

Bellwood-Antis 20 17 16 0 — 53

3-point goals: Juniata Valley: none; Bellwood-Antis 11 (Clapper 2, Cacciotti 2, P. Hammond 2, C. Hammond, Gerwert, Norton, Quick, Hess).

Records: Juniata Valley (3-7); Bellwood-Antis (7-4).

Officials: Mark Mitchell, Darren Elvey, Jim Boston.

JV: No game.