PHS, South bow in openers, North girls’ basketball falls in semifinals
By: Justin Feil
Inconsistencies cost the three local teams at West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s second annual War of the Worlds Tournament.
Princeton High and first-time participant West Windsor-Plainsboro South lost both their tournament openers and their first consolation games. Both were scheduled to play Thursday, when the Little Tigers were scheduled to take on Delaware Valley and WW-P South was to face Somerville.
The host Knights, who dismissed of Delaware Valley, 43-40, in its tournament opener on Monday, fought to the end with Bishop Ahr before falling, 55-46, Wednesday in one winners’ bracket game. They were scheduled to take on East Brunswick for third place on Thursday.
"It’s better than nothing," said WW-P North’s Liz Tang of the potential bronze finish. "It will be a challenge."
Tang, a sophomore point guard for the Knights, played in last year’s War of the Worlds, but she is adjusting to a different level this year.
"I was a swing player last year," Tang said. "I played in the JV tournament."
Tang appears to have adjusted quickly to the varsity level. She scored eight of her 10 points in the second quarter as the Northern Knights rallied from a 17-12 deficit to take a 23-18 lead on Tang’s three-point play with 2:04 before the half. The play came one minute and a half after Tang registered back-to-back steals, the first resulting in one foul shot and the second earning her another three-point play.
"I saw openings," Tang said. "We were down and I had to score. I found an opening and drove."
In the third quarter, those gaps in the Bishop Ahr defense closed down and the Knights struggled offensively. Bishop Ahr also took better care of the basketball and WW-P North didn’t profit from as many fastbreak opportunities as it had in the second quarter. By the end of the third quarter, the visitors had opened a six-point lead that they sustained through the fourth quarter. Sam Yang led the Knights with 12 points while Flynn Eisenman also scored 10 points.
"We seemed to hurt ourselves," said WW-PN head coach Brett Charleston, whose team fell to 2-3 with Wednesday’s loss. "We seem to struggle at times offensively. Usually it comes down to turnovers. We’re not a real gifted offensive team and any time our press doesn’t get us some easy baskets, it’s harder for us to score.
"We were up and down, points-wise. In the third quarter, we only had six points. We had 15 in the fourth quarter. That’s our game. We can’t keep it together for 32 minutes."
Tang is hoping that will change as she and the Knights get more experience together. The Knights got their first look at this year’s team in a summer camp, and she has since stepped into a starting role.
"At the end of last year, Coach talked to me about it," Tang said. "He said I had to step up if I wanted to be the starting point guard."
"It’s a long process," Charleston said. "She may only be a sophomore, but we still have expectations for her as a point guard. Her job is to put us in good position. At times, she does that well. At times, she has more to learn."
Tang and the Knights are looking to become more consistent in the big-pressure situations. North looked in control during its second-quarter comeback, but after halftime reverted to the turnovers that plagued it in the first quarter.
"I think we lost our composure a little bit," Tang said. "We were trying to do too much and not really running our offense well."
WW-P South also took a little too long to get its offense going in a 49-45 loss to Delaware Valley on Wednesday.
"We were down, 13-0, in the first quarter," said Pirate freshman Becky Peters. "We started pressing which got them a little crazy. We got more points off the press, which made us come back to two or four points. We were down by two, and we fouled and they made their fouls shots and that was pretty much it.
"We can’t let that happen," she added, "Thirteen to nothing, that’s ridiculous."
The good news for the Knights is they mustered their comeback still without the services of top inside player Kelly Kasper, who’s out until next month, and Sarah Guisto, a regular starter who was on vacation. And the mistakes that cost the Pirates are correctable.
"I think it was on us," said Peters, who scored 14 of her 21 points in the fourth-quarter rally. "Their zone, we should have taken advantage of it. The way we were playing, we tried to do things that weren’t working."
What did work for the Pirates, who fell to 1-4, was their pressure defense. It brought them back from a big deficit and gave them a chance to win in the fourth quarter. Making that pressure more consistent is a goal for South as it returns to Colonial Valley Conference play.
Princeton played both its tournament games without starting point guard Zoe Sarnak and backup Natasha Kardassis, and the short-handed Little Tigers struggled without them. The Little Tigers lost, 65-19, to East Brunswick in their opener Monday and fell, 46-31, to Somerville on Wednesday despite 12 points from Erin Cook. PHS slipped to 3-2 with the loss.
"Other players are stepping up," said PHS head coach Nikki Inzano, whose club opened up the season 3-0. "It hurts. Zoe has scored 12 and 13 points. We’re missing those points from her. We just have to believe in ourselves. We did it against Lawrence. We can do it against other teams. We have to have confidence."
And the Little Tigers need a little more consistency, just like WW-P South and WW-P North.
"There was some times against Somerville that there were sparks, just like we were starting off at beginning of year," Inzano said. "I think they just have to keep going with it. They’ll get through it."

