Resilient Metea Valley slips past Providence
Metea Valley's boys basketball team has a streaky side and found itself on the positive end on Monday.
Advancing into Tuesday's quarterfinals of York's 42nd annual Jack Tosh Holiday Classic in Elmhurst. the Mustangs beat Providence Catholic 55-52.
"We've been off to some slow starts," said Metea guard Harrison Kranz. "First quarters have definitely been beating us down. But we've shown great resilience and that's what we saw today."
Metea Valley (5-5) held Providence scoreless the last 1:07 of the game. Dei'Ron DeLaRosa scored on a hard drive for a 53-52 lead with 57 seconds to play.
Off a Providence inbounds play with just less than 12 seconds left, Jeremy Hunter grabbed a steal. Kranz followed with a pair of free throws with 9.5 seconds left. Providence (3-7) missed a 3-point shot under heavy pressure as time expired.
"I knew he was going to throw it over my head, so I just tried to bat it away so he wouldn't get it," said Hunter, who scored 14 points to lead the Mustangs. Malik Hall scored 11 points with 9 rebounds before fouling out with 16 seconds left in the game.
Providence leapt to a 14-2 lead only to see Metea go on a 16-0 run spanning the first and second quarters. It went like until DeLaRosa's layup in the final minute.
"It seems to be the last couple weeks we're getting more positive spurts than negative," said Metea coach Bob Vozza.
Providence was carried by guards Jake Schutter and Michael Drew, particularly Schutter. The 3-stroking guard scored 15 of his 25 points in the first half. Kranz's second-half defense lessened the impact.
Hall came off the bench to help shake Metea's early malaise, and the 6-foot-5 sophomore joined Tristan Schlosser to counter a 28-24 halftime deficit. Hunter and Kranz, who joined Schlosser with 9 points, combined for 16 of Metea's last 18 points.
Early in the third quarter Metea led 51-44. In this game of spurts, that margin did not last. No surprise there.
"We're going to be in those situations all year, we're not going to have easy games," Vozza said. "Hopefully, it's a learning process and we can get better with it."