Girls Basketball: Somerville outlasts Delaware Valley in Skyland Valley battle

ALEXANDRIA TOWNSHIP – The Somerville High School girls basketball team knows, despite the preseason hype, its run toward finishing what it started a year ago wasn’t going to be easy; not in its section, certainly not in the county, and Tuesday night Delaware Valley showed the Skyland Conference Valley Division race is also going to be a war.

Despite the Pioneers’ best efforts, building three different double-digit leads, the Terriers refused to relent, closing the gap each time. And although Somerville ultimately scored a 61-54 victory, the message came through loud and clear that the Pioneers are going to have their hands full all season.

“I think every game is going to be like this,” Somerville coach Matt Melesurgo said. “Teams are just going to give us their best punch whenever possible. I think we responded, and that’s the mark of a good basketball team to respond when things are not going well. And we got good leadership on the court when we needed a stop or a big shot in the corner, and Ny (Nyasia Thomas) and Mel (Van Ness) responded. That’s a great basketball team. They’re going to win a lot of games just doing what they do.”

“I’ve never been a believer in moral victories. We want to come and we want to win the game,” Del Val coach Michael Haughey said. “But, that being said, I think absolutely we’re a contender in this thing. We were a 19-win team last year and we returned almost everyone. We want to come into every game and win. But I told the girls, we would have beaten almost any other team on our schedule tonight. We played hard, we played well, we moved the ball well and defensively we played tough, as usual.”

GIRLS BASKETBALL: Tuesday's roundup

Van Ness finished with 28 points to lead all scorers, adding six rebounds. Beatriz Tomale added 10 points and five rebounds, while Meghan Douglas chipped in eight points and nine boards. Thomas was held to just eight points, but six of them came on a pair of 3s in the third quarter, as Somerville (2-0) opened its third double-digit lead of the evening, entering the fourth quarter up 49-37.

But as they did after trailing by nine late in the first quarter, by 10 midway through the third and by 12 entering the fourth, Delaware Valley (1-1) kept coming back.

With Somerville doing a great job containing Delaware Valley standouts Veronica Christ and Margaret Affeld for the first three quarters, other players stepped up for the Terriers, including Erin Pfreundschuh, who tallied all 10 of her points in the second quarter and seven of her 10 rebounds, as Delaware Valley closed a nine-point deficit into a 29-29 halftime tie.

“We knew Somerville was going to come in here and kind of sag off everyone else besides Veronica (Christ) and Margaret (Affeld),” Haughey said. “We were kind of ready for that. And other girls did a great job stepping up. Erin did a great job stepping up in the first half, battling a little bit of a knee injury from the Manville game and she kind of pushed through and I’m proud of her for that.”

It looked as if Somerville was going to pull away for good in the third quarter, as it shot 3-for-4 from beyond the 3-point line, outscoring the Terriers 20-8, but, once again, Del Val’s relentless defense and the fact Christ and Affeld started to find their groove, kept the Terriers involved. Del Val began the fourth quarter on a 9-0 run, as Somerville shot 0-for-4 from the field and committed four turnovers in the first two minutes of the period.

After Tomale hit a layup off an inbounds to make it 51-46, Affeld put back an offensive rebound and then hit a long 3-pointer to tie it 51-51 with 2:56 remaining.

But Somerville’s depth and athleticism won out at the end, as Van Ness posted eight points in the final 2:26, including shooting 6-for-6 from the free-throw line to put it away.

“We knew we were playing for a conference title when we came here,” Van Ness said. “We’ve been here before. This is what we do. We trained all year. It’s unfinished business. This is what we have to do.”

“It was just two great teams, it really was,” said Haughey, whose team got 18 points from Affeld and 17 from Christ, including 13 in the second half. “They were getting on their runs, we were getting on our runs, and the difference was they just got on the run at the end there. They have a lot of girls to contain.”

Simeon Pincus can be reached atCNGirlsHoops@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @SimeonPincus and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SimeonPincusCN