By Kyle Moylan, Sports Editor
The Allentown High School girls’ basketball team may have lost its holiday tournament, but it’s winning most of its games.
When one of the teams dropped out, Allentown’s holiday tournament was shifted to individual games against Delran today (Thursday) at 1 p.m. and Princeton on Saturday at 3 p.m.
While there is no championship at stake, the games still count. And for an Allentown team that is currently 4-1, that’s a lot of incentive.
”With more experience and the girls playing together for a few years, we set the bar higher this year,” noted Allentown Coach Linda Weise. “We’re expected to do better.”
The only thing that has kept Allentown from a perfect 5-0 is a 57-43 loss to Steinert on December 18. Bea Pesciotta scored 19 points and Amanda Turowski added eight.
”We had a bad first quarter (Allentown was down 11-2) and then competed for three quarters with them,” noted Weise. “We played with some fear at the beginning.”
That fear was alleviated by the next night when Allentown outscored South Plainfield by 11 points in the first quarter on the way to a 53-36 victory. Bea Pesciotta recorded 13 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Haley Wilhelm had 10 points and eight rebounds. Angela Scibilia added 13 points.
”I was happy with the way we responded after the Steinert game,” Weise said. “We played well against South Plainfield and Ewing. We set the tempo of the game. We started strong and continued that way. Good teams do that.”
Allentown improved to 4-1 with a 66-42 win over Ewing last Friday. Angela Scibilia scored 22 points. Turowski (seven assists) and Brittany O’Brien scored eight points each, and Pesciotta and Wilhelm both put in seven points.
”We have a balanced scoring attack, but it’s nice when one girl can step up and have a great shooting night like that,” Weise noted of Scibilia’s 22-point effort.
Whether it’s by Scibilia, Wilhelm, Turowski, Pesciotta or someone else, Weise is hoping the same happens when Allentown hosts the two games this week. They may no longer be part of a tournament, but the meaning of these games will be just as great when seedings come out for the state tournament in a couple of months.
