Girls basketball falls to Delaney Pierce and Massillon Washington

There are times when it just does no good to overthink things. The bottom line is, Massillon Washington had Delaney Pierce on its side and Avon didn’t.

End of story.

Pierce earned first team All-Ohio honors last year as a freshman and she already has topped 1,000 points for her career. So, when she led her team against Avon in a Division II district final at Medina High School Feb. 28, it came as no surprise that she scored 29 points to lead the Tigers to a 75-50 victory and a berth into the regionals at Wadsworth March 3 against Twinsburg.

“They just had a really good player,” said Avon coach Adam Castrilla. “You know, it’s hard if you have a kid that can just work and do it a lot of different ways. I think she ended up with 29, and our focus was to keep her to her average and not let the others hurt us. I think at halftime No. 4 had 15, so that’s a credit to them.”

Pierce entered the game with the following averages: 26.6 points (while shooting 45% from the floor), 9.0 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 3.5 steals and 1.3 blocks. Amazingly, the 5-foot-8 guard leads the 15-7 Tigers in every statistical category. But in this game, she had some help, as fellow sophomore Rylee Adams (the No. 4 that Castrilla referred to) and lone senior Hannah Nicola each had 17 points. Thus, the trio accounted for 63 of Massillon’s 75 points.

The Eagles, who bow out at 9-15, opened the scoring when Ava Mitchell hit a fastbreak layup just 12 seconds into the contest. About 90 seconds later, the score was tied at 4 after a basket by Avon’s Alaina Pagan. But that’s when Massillon got things rolling, outscoring Avon 20-6 for the remainder of the quarter. Adams had 13 points and Pierce had 10, as the tandem of 10th-graders had all but one of their teams’ points, while running out to a 24-10 lead.

Things only got worse for the Eagles, as the lead got as big as 21 at 36-15 midway through the second period. With freshman Chloe Collins scoring eight of her 13 points in the quarter, Avon did manage to work its way back to a 40-25 halftime deficit, but they would get no closer for the remainder of the game.

The game plan for Massillon was simple—get the ball into Pierce’s hands. Avon used a man-to-man defense the entire game, with one person assigned to faceguard Pierce. Five different Eagles attempted to get in her way, but to no avail.

When asked if the Tigers did anything unexpected in the game, Castrilla said no.

“It was pretty much everything that they do,” he said. “We watched a lot of film on them, and there was nothing where we went, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t see that coming.’ They’re pretty much set with what they do and they just do it. You know, when you have an athlete like that who can impose her will a little bit, I don’t blame them. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

Collins and Pagan led Avon with 13 points each, with 11 of Pagan’s coming in the fourth quarter. Abby Owens added nine for the Eagles and Audrey Lammers had eight.

“When I look back on this year, there’s a lot to be proud of,” Castrilla said. “I hate to just keep beating a dead horse by talking about adversity, but we had a lot to overcome. I think that’s going to carry on through life. The lessons learned are great. For the kids moving forward, they got a great taste, a great opportunity today. Hopefully it inspires some hunger and wanting to keep getting better and get to the point where we’re cutting down the nets.

“We’re just finishing up year two with what we envisioned for this program. You know, it’s human nature to want it all now and to win it all now, our seniors are an unbelievable group. There’s not many places where you could have the opportunity to coach such good kids. They handled a lot of things with grace and I’m proud of them.”