Central Bucks West girls take District 1 Class 6A title with 42-38 win over Pennsbury

Nobody is going to outwork the Central Bucks West girls’ basketball team, which is a good thing, because Pennsbury made the Bucks work on Saturday.

In a game that featured contact on just about every trip down the floor, West led wire-to-wire and held on to beat the Falcons, 42-38, in the District 1 Class 6A championship game at Temple University’s Liacouras Center.

With the win, the Bucks (24-4), who entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed, earned the top spot from District 1 and will open the PIAA Class 6A state tournament near home on Saturday against Hempfield, the seventh-place team from District 3.

The No. 4 seed Falcons (22-5) will also open the tournament near home, against Red Lion, the fourth-place team from District 3, on Saturday.

Senior forward Jess Broskey, who shared the team lead in scoring with junior guard Paige Gilbert (10 points), set the tone early when she converted a pair of follow shots. The first gave West a 2-0 lead and the second boosted the Bucks’ margin to 8-3. Each one came with Broskey getting banged hard by the Pennsbury man-to-man defense.

“I knew how much we all wanted this,” Broskey said. “I knew my role is what I had to do. I knew I had to be physical on the inside, especially against a physical team like Pennsbury. When the crowd started to get loud, like the other student section, I had to tune it out and play my game.”

A three-point play by Falcons sophomore guard Ava Sciolla (18 points) at the end of the first quarter kept Pennsbury close, but West’s man-to-man defense held the Falcons to a single point in the second quarter and took a 21-9 lead into intermission.

Sciolla heated up in the third quarter, dropping in 9 points to keep Pennsbury within shouting distance, trailing 31-19. The Falcons rallied in the fourth quarter with an 8-2 scoring run, led by Mary Miller (8 points), who drained a pair of jumpers, to cut the Bucks lead to 32-28.

But that was as close as they would get. Pennsbury was forced to foul, and West converted 10-of-15 free throws down the stretch to ice the win and earn the team’s second district title.

Bucks coach Zach Sibel, who played for Falcons coach Frank Sciolla when Sciolla was Pennsbury’s boys’ coach, won a district title in his first year at the helm at West.

“I’ve got to give all the credit to these girls,” Sibel said. “I got the job in May, we had a workout the next day, and we talked about that you have to have an end goal in sight. The end goal is a championship, a [Suburban One League] championship, a district championship, then moving on to states. These girls wanted it, and they sacrificed so much to get it, and these girls deserve it. They really do.”

Pennsbury 8 1 10 19 - 38

Central Bucks West 11 10 9 12 - 42

P: Ava Sciolla 18, Mary Miller 8, Nicole Pompili 8, Abbi Nassivera 2, Mia Spinelli 1, Kiley Haws 1.

CBW: Paige Gilbert 10, Jess Broskey 10, Olivia Irons 8, Emily Spratt 7, Maddie Burke 7.