Prep Charter girls fall in semifinals

For the second year in a row, Prep Charter fell in the PIAA Class AAA girls' basketball semifinals, this time succumbing to District 3 champion Lancaster Catholic, 90-85, Wednesday night at Spring-Ford.

Just as in 2011, the loss was deflating - devastating even, judging by the swelled eyes on many of the Huskies' faces as the players trickled out of the locker room. No Public League girls' team had ever advanced this far in the state tournament, and Prep Charter did it twice in consecutive years.

But the loss wasn't just about a program failing to become the Pub's first PIAA finalist in girls' hoops. It also marked the end of a stellar career.

Kahleah Copper, the 6-foot-2 McDonald's All-American bound for Rutgers, played her final high school game. Copper did all she could, pouring in 41 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, with two blocks and four steals.

She shot a proficient 13 for 21 from the field and 15 for 19 from the free-throw line. She accounted for 19 of the Huskies' 36 first-half points, and labored to keep them in the game late.

"She put us on her back. As a group, we didn't respond," Prep Charter coach Paul Rieser said. "It was too big of a hill, too big of a mountain to climb tonight."

The win advanced Lancaster Catholic to the PIAA title game against two-time defending champion Archbishop Wood, the winner of Wednesday's other semifinal, on Saturday, 6 p.m., at Penn State's Bryce Jordan Center.

The Huskies (28-4), whose nine-game win streak was snapped, led from the 4-minute, 17-second mark of the first quarter - when Copper hit a short jumper on the wing - all the way to the 5:42 mark of the third quarter, when Lancaster (30-3) snagged a 51-50 advantage on Porsha Speller's three-point play.

Prep Charter forged a couple of ties along the way, but never regained the lead. The ball-pressure defense that yielded a 36-32 halftime lead was nowhere to be found after intermission, when the Crusaders pushed the tempo and marched to the foul line.

Speller, a 5-7 junior guard, got to the line at will, finishing with a team-high 30 points, including 18 for 24 from the foul line. Danielle Atkinson added 21 for Lancaster, which shot 50.9 percent from the floor.

"Our defense basically broke down," Copper said. "After the first line of defense, you get beat, and we weren't recovering."

Added Rieser: "A team scores 90 points, you're not going to win. We gave up driving lanes we don't normally give up. We didn't recover. We didn't help [on defense]."

On offense, Prep Charter, ranked No. 3 in Southeastern Pennsylvania by The Inquirer, was in a groove of its own. Ciani Cryor did a solid job of running the point, en route to 10 points and six assists. Ciera Nimmons came off the bench to score 20 on 7-for-14 shooting, including four three-pointers. The team shot 51.7 percent from the floor.

The game was tied, 55-55, going into the fourth. Lancaster played the front-runner for the duration of the final period, scoring its final 15 points from the line. Thus ended Prep Charter's season and Copper's high school career.

"It's definitely good, especially getting this far with an even younger team [than last year]," Copper said. "Last year, we got this far and we were all older - seniors and juniors. This year, we got this far with freshmen and sophomores and me."

Lancaster Catholic   10 22 23 35 – 90

Prep Charter   13 23 19 30 – 85

LC: Alyssa Aichele 4, Danielle Atkinson 21, Emily Martin 18, Porsha Speller 30, Elizabeth Veronis 8, Alayna Nickolaus 1, Erin Holt 8.

PC: Indiah Cauley 3, Kahleah Copper 41, Hannah Timmons 7, Ciani Cryor 10, Erica Smith-Sowell 1, Ciera Nimmons 20, Ahnje Timbers 1, Lorna Caesar 2.