While the Lady Huskies more than did their part to keep Lady Blue Pirate senior LeeAnna Royer and junior Levada Gorsuch in check offensively, perhaps they weren’t counting on just how good the trio of freshmen are on this team.

Williamsburg’s Faith Detwiler, Bella Royer and Brynn Lower combined for 36 points, and the Pirates got up by nine in the fourth and then held off a rally from Bishop Carroll, the second seed, to capture a 53-48 victory at the Altoona Area High School Fieldhouse.

“I’m really proud of them,” Williamsburg coach Angela Detwiler said. “This is a really big stage to play on, and to only be freshmen out there, it didn’t seem to affect them this bigger stage. I felt like they all three played really well out there.”

The fourth-seeded Lady Blue Pirates will take on third-seeded Saint Joseph’s Catholic Academy, a 71-58 winner over top-seeded Bishop Guilfoyle, on Tuesday at the Altoona Fieldhouse at 7:30 p.m.

Photo for the Mirror by Chuck Meyers Faith Detwiler (Williamsburg) and Ava Pablic (Bishop Carroll) dive for a loose ball.

The Williamsburg ninth graders that stepped up were Faith Detwiler, who played the last 6:02 of the game with four fouls, led Williamsburg with 16 points, Bella Royer recorded 15 and Lower finished with five points.

Meanwhile, LeeAnna Royer had just five points through three quarters before ending with 11, while Gorsuch, who fouled out with 5:12 left in the fourth and the game tied, completed her day with two points — well below her season average of 19.

“If you would have told me that before the game, I would have thought we (won by) 25 (points),” Bishop Carroll coach Nick Smith said about LeeAnna Royer and Gorsuch combining for 13 points. “… I would say anytime you hold the both of them to (13) combined, you have a pretty good chance of winning. But the rest of the team stepped up tonight. I give them credit; they played a heck of a game.”

Not long after Gorsuch fouled out, and with the game tied at 37-37, LeeAnna Royer delivered a 3-pointer near the four-minute mark that put the Pirates up for good. The deep shot also kickstarted a 10-1 run that allowed Williamsburg to go up 47-38.

“That was a huge stretch in the fourth quarter,” Coach Detwiler said. “I talked to the girls and I said, ‘Listen, this is one possession at a time. We need to take care of the ball every single possession’. They started doing that — they took care of the ball, and we chipped away one point at a time.”

In the spurt, Faith Detwiler hit a pair of free throws before Bella Royer tacked on an old-fashion three-point play, as well as another layup with 2:18 left to give her team the nine-point edge. Bishop Carroll buckled down and went on an 8-1 burst of its own.

Five straight points, with four coming from Ava Pablic in addition to a foul shot by Madison Delauter, had BC within four before Williamsburg senior Regan Prough hit the second of two from the line.

Emily Lucko, the Huskies leading scorer, was held to six points with half coming on a trey with 49 seconds remaining to pull her team within two points at 48-46.

“That’s how we’ve been all year. For some reason we go through cold spells, and I don’t know what happens,” Smith said. “We don’t quit. We have the girls to do it, the defenses to do it and they don’t quit for 32 minutes. We were down, had to start fouling and try to get some steals. We got close but it was a heck of a game.”

Faith Detwiler connected on a pair of foul shots before Pablic made the first of her two with 30.2 to go. Following a missed Williamsburg shot, Carroll had a chance to potentially tie but LeeAnna Royer came up with a steal when she forced a jump ball that had possession in the Lady Pirates’ favor.

LeeAnna Royer made the second foul shot before Pablic could only hit one of her two after being fouled with 4.2 left. Leading 51-48, LeeAnna Royer sealed the game by making both from the line to set the final. “I was having a rough game at the beginning,” LeeAnna Royer said. “When I got the ball at the end, I thought I stepped up when I needed to most for my team.”

Bishop Carroll got the matchup started with eight of the first 11 points as Adelyn Myers had five and Pablic canned a triple to put BC up 8-3 at the 2:52 point. Myers and Pablic, both juniors, had 18 points each to account for 36 of the Huskies’ 48 on the day.

Williamsburg closed the frame with four points on free throws from Bella Royer to get within 8-7. The second quarter featured one tie and five lead changes as Pablic’s layup to start the second stanza put Carroll up 10-7.

The Lady Blue Pirates reeled off an 13-5 spurt to claim a 20-15 advantage when Lower’s driving layup came at 3:16. The Williamsburg freshmen recorded the first 15 points of the afternoon for its team as a 3-pointer from Prough at 5:21 made it 18-13.

“I know that’s what I have to do because if I’m taken out of the game and so is our post player Vada, we need these other girls to step up,” LeeAnna Royer said. “They are young and they are stepping up. I know what I can do to help them. If I drive in and make something happen, I can get it to my other guards, and they can put up the shots and have success.”

Following the Lower make, the Lady Huskies rattled off six unanswered to retake the lead at 21-20. A LeeAnna Royer hoop with just over a minute left in the half sent her team into the break up 22-21.

The largest lead of the third for either team was four points and came at the outset as Bella Royer buried a 3-pointer at 6:36 to put Williamsburg up 25-21.

“I just know that I had to really step up for my team especially when Vada and Lee are getting guarded that well,” Bella Royer said. “This feels really good because we wanted to be able to get into the final four and continue playing.”

With the game knotted at 25-25, Faith Detwiler fought hard for a layup, Delauter canned a trey off a baseline inbound play and then LeeAnna Royer hit a trifecta to put her team on top at 30-28.

Following a turnover, Pablic’s shot from deep gave Bishop Carroll control back with just under three minutes to go in the third.

Gorsuch notched her lone field goal of the contest to make it 33-32 but then quickly picked up her fourth which allowed Sarah Miller to stretch BC’s lead back to three at 35-32.

Lower made the first of two shots from the stripe with 4.6 remaining in the third stanza.

Faith Detwiler tied the game back up at 35-35 with another driving layup and then Lower got her own shot inside to fall to put her team ahead 37-35 just 90 seconds into the fourth.

“I can always rely on my teammates to help because they have my back,” Faith Detwiler said. “We all made some key shots in that fourth quarter to help us get control.”

Myers recorded a layup of her own 14 seconds later to even the score for the last time at 37-37. Williamsburg went 16-for-23 from the foul line on the day, including a 9-for-11 showing in the final frame, while the Huskies were 12-for-19.

Bishop Carroll, which graduates Delauter, Miller and Claire Long, ends its season with a 25-5 record.

“I just told them in there (locker room) from summer until now, the worked we’ve put in and the standard they’ve set the last two years to get Bishop Carroll back to not just district playoffs or state playoffs, but make a run at it (state championship),” Smith said.

The Lady Pirates (25-5)( will play Saint Joe’s for the third time this season. The Wolves won both: 72-44 on Jan. 18 and 75-73 in the consolation contest of District 6 1A play on Feb. 26.

“Saint Joe’s is such a good team,” Coach Detwiler said. “We had the one game where we lost by 28 to them, but the three other times (in the last two years), we’ve met has been like a one- or two-point game — it’s always been a battle.”

BISHOP CARROLL (48): Miller 0 2-2 2, Lucko 2 0-0 6, Delauter 1 1-3 4, Pablic 4 8-10 18, Ad. Myers 8 1-4 18, Av. Myers 0 0-0 0, Saxion 0 0-0 0, C. Myers 0 0-0 0. Totals: 13 12-19 48.

WILLIAMSBURG (53): L. Royer 3 3-6 11, B. Royer 4 6-7 15, Gorsuch 1 0-1 2, Lower 2 1-2 5, R. Prough 1 1-2 4, Detwiler 5 5-5 16, Colbert 0 0-0 0. Totals: 16 16-23 53.

SCORE BY QUARTERS

Bishop Carroll 8 13 14 13 — 48

Williamsburg 7 15 11 20 — 53

3-point field goals: Bishop Carroll 6 (Lucko 2, Pablic 2, Delauter, Ad. Myers); Williamsburg 5 (L. Royer 2, B. Royer, R. Prough, Detwiler).

Records: Bishop Carroll (25-5); Williamsburg (25-5).