Easton eliminates Pleasant Valley

In many ways, Pleasant Valley did exactly what it wanted to do against Easton, but it still didn’t turn out well.

The Red Rovers downed the Bears 56-41 to advance to the District 11 6A girls semifinal game. The loss ends PV’s season at 14-10.

The plan was to keep Leanna Deegan from back-dooring the Bears and getting easy points, and at the same time work to get her in foul trouble. Pleasant Valley did both of those things effectively and Deegan wound up on the bench for about an eight-minute stretch late in the third quarter into the fourth quarter with four fouls.

Where the plan went awry was in that they weren’t able to keep Deegan from rebounding both her misses and those of her teammates. Deegan finished the night with 13 rebounds and scored eight of her game-high 25 points on put-backs.

“Coming in, we knew what we had to do against her and we did some of those things, including getting her into foul trouble, but we couldn’t keep her off the glass,” said PV coach Nadia Gauronsky. “She’s such a good player and she was the difference in the game tonight.”

Cameron Caffrey led the Pleasant Valley offense with 10 points, including two three-pointers. Alexa Clark also tallied 10 points for the Bears.

Pleasant Valley got off to a strong start, getting the opening tip to Clark, who raced through the paint to give the Bears a quick 2-0 lead. Throughout the first quarter, PV was paced by Clark, who scored six of her eight points in the first eight minutes of the game.

Easton worked to effectively take Clark out of the offensive scheme for Pleasant Valley, which opened up Caffrey to get more scoring opportunities, but it wasn’t enough.

The Rovers worked their way to a 12-8 lead after the first quarter, but Deegan took over the game from that point with 12 second-quarter points. Even with the outburst, Pleasant Valley stayed close enough to go into halftime down 28-20.

“We wanted to get off to a good start and we did that, but just couldn’t keep the offense going throughout the game,” said Gauronsky.

With Deegan on the bench late in the game, Easton was still able to keep PV from cutting too deeply into their deficit, which grew to as high as 16 points in the fourth quarter. Allison Altobelli came off the bench to pick up some of the offensive slack for the Red Rovers with six second-half points and eight points in the game.

Easton will now play Nazareth in the district semifinals on Monday. The Blue Eagles downed Parkland 46-33 Thursday to advance to the semis.

THE DEEGAN DIFFERENCE ... Deegan’s presence on the court was unmistakable. In the first half, she took two breathers and Pleasant Valley outscored the Red Rovers 10-2 during her time on the bench. Between the two breaks, she single-handedly outscored Pleasant Valley 7-0 and blocked a shot.

GOOD-BYE, FRIENDS ... Pleasant Valley says good-bye to seniors Masani Francis and Mikaela Miller. Francis scored seven points in her high school finale.

“They’ve both done a lot for this program and I can’t say enough about how hard they worked for us,” said coach Gauronsky.

PLEASANT VALLEY

R. Wagner 1-1-2-3, Caffrey 4-0-0-10, O’Neil 2-0-0-6, A. Clark 3-2-2-8, B. Clark 1-0-0-3, Rosenberg 1-0-0-2, Francis 3-0-0-7, A. Wagner 1-0-0-2. TOTALS: 16-3-4-41.

EASTON

Oliver 2-2-2-7, Grundhauser 2-1-2-6, Altobelli 4-0-0-8, Smith 0-3-4-3, Saylor 1-1-2-3, Doerner 1-2-2-4, Deegan 11-3-6-25. TOTALS: 21-12-18-56.

Pleasant Vy. 8 12 13 8 - 41

Easton 12 16 15 13 - 56

Three-pointers: Pleasant Valley - Caffrey 2, O’Neil 2, B. Clark 1, Francis 1; Easton - Oliver 1, Grundhauser 1.