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CLAYSBURG -- When you've had to wait about 10 days between games at this time of the year, the fear of rust can sink in.
For the Williamsburg girls basketball team, that extra practice with Altoona went a long way in ensuring they came out on fire from the opening tip.
The Lady Pirates outscored Aquinas Academy by a whooping 17-4 margin as they rolled on to a 60-44 triumph in the PIAA Class 1A first round match up at Claysburg-Kimmel High School Saturday afternoon.
"After you're off for quite a long time, you're ready to get out there and play a game, and I'm glad we were ready from the start," Williamsburg coach Amy Hileman said. "We knew that they were going to bring pressure. We worked on a lot of that this week, looking down the court, and we found a lot of openings."
The win set up a date for Williamsburg with District 9 champion Elk County Catholic on Wednesday at West Branch High School at 7 p.m.
Ayla Hileman credited the passing game for the flow the Lady Pirate offense produced.
"We were getting easy layups on them," Ayla Hileman said. "They had to figure out a different press."
Laney Prough helped spark the first-quarter offense with a shot off the glass and later took a feed from Ayla Hileman as she scored six of her 12 points in the opening stanza.
From there, Hileman again set up LeeAnna Royer off the break, and then Levada Gorsuch scored on a floater, which helped Williamsburg jump out to a 17-4 lead.
"It's hard to press with LeAnna out front," Amy Hileman said. "She can dribble through most presses. Credit to them, they did give a lot of pressure. All week we were working on coming to the ball, not waiting for the ball to come to you. You have to get your fundamentals right, and always be moving to the open area."
That outburst continued into the second as Royer knocked down a 3-pointer from the far corner early in the frame before eventually adding a runner to extend the Lady Pirate advantage to 25-6. Royer finished the game with 14 points.
Williamsburg ended up taking a 27-12 advantage to the locker room.
"We missed a ton of shots in the first half, so I tried to tell the girls, keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting," Aquinas Academy coach Christopher Lebakken said. "We weren't able to slow them down at the same time. It didn't help our cause; they're a good team."
Coming out of the half Ayla Hileman went from setting up shot opportunities to converting opportunities of her own as she drained a jumper as she went on to score 12 of her game-high 16 points.
Moving ahead to the later portion of the frame, Hileman added an NBA-range 3-pointer, which gave Williamsburg a 40-20 lead with just more than two minutes left in the stanza.
"She's only been back two months, starting this third month," Amy Hileman said. "It takes a while to just be OK with yourself, and she's getting there. This is her senior year, and I'm so thankful she's on the floor."
Ayla has felt her confidence grow as the season has progressed since suffering her knee injury.
"I've been getting more comfortable every game, and every practice (as the season has gone on), and I feel pretty good right now," she said. "I'm pretty confident with it."
The Lady Crusaders didn't go quietly as Emily Fisher from downtown helped cut the deficit to as low as 11 points. She finished with a team-high 15 points.
That was as close as Aquinas Academy got thanks to a late Gorsuch bucket. Gorsuch gave the Lady Pirates a fourth scorer in double figures with 15.
AQUINAS ACADEMY (44): Fisher 6 1-2 15, Junker 3 0-0 8, E. Keverline 2 5-6 9, Johnson 1 0-0 2, Taylor 2 3-4 7, Risdon 0 0-0 0, Mahon 1 0-0 3, Hite 0 0-0 0, Tarquino 0 0-0 0, T. Keverline 0 0-0 0. Totals--15 9-11 44.
WILLIAMSBURG (60): Hileman 7 0-0 16, Royer 4 5-6 14, Gorsuch 6 3-4 15, L. Prough 5 2-2 12, R. Prough 1 0-0 2, Ranalli 0 1-2 1, Carper 0 0-0 0, A. Colbert 0 0-0 0, G. Colbert 0 0-0 0, Frye 0 0-0 0. Totals--23 11-14 60.
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Aquinas Academy 4 8 15 17 -- 44
Williamsburg 17 10 20 13 -- 60
3-point field goals: Aquinas Academy 5 (Fisher 2, Junker 2, Austin), Williamsburg 3 (Hileman 2, Royer)
Records: Aquinas Academy (17-8), Williamsburg (25-3).