Chartiers Valley defeated Peters Township 73-66 behind a masterful performance from senior star, Jayden Davis. He finished the game with 28 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds, and 3 steals.
Chartiers never trailed in this one. They were on fire from the start as they jumped out to a 9-0 lead. Jake Lewis scored the first 5 points of the game for the Colts with a layup and a three on the next possession.
Peters got on the board with a layup from Ben Miller. He followed that up with an and-1 shortly after, but couldn’t knock down the free throw. That would become an unfortunate theme in this one for Peters, as they started the game 0-5 from the line.
Throughout the night, any time Peters threw a punch, Chartiers was there to throw one back. After buckets from Dylan Donovan and Nick McCullough, Lewis hit another three for Chartiers to give him 8 points and put the Colts up 17-8.
After one quarter, Chartiers Valley led Peters Township 17-10. At the time, Peters had to be fairly happy to only be down 7 considering how much they struggled at the line, going just 2-9 in the quarter.
Logan Helfrik started the second quarter with a three for Chartiers and Jayden Davis got a steal and score to put the Colts up 22-10. Sean Felk pumped some life into Peters by hitting a very deep three to get things back under 10.
Davis began to go to work at this point, hitting a pull-up jumper, rattling in another, and sinking two free throws as he scored 6 straight points for Chartiers Valley. Peters did their best to keep things within striking distance though, as Donovan found big man, Jake Wetzel, inside to get the lead back to single digits.
Peters had their chances to get back into this one when Chartiers began racking up a handful of fouls in the quarter, but they missed 4 straight at the line. McCullough sank a three with under a minute to go in the first half, but Davis was there to answer as he got the friendly roll as time expired, giving Chartiers a 34-24 lead at the half.
If you checked the box score at half, you really wouldn’t notice much difference between the two teams until you glanced at the free throw column. Chartiers was 5-5 from the line in the first half. Peters had three times the attempts, but less makes. They were just 4-15 from the stripe.
Peters Township Head Coach, Joe Urmann, did confirm after the game that free throws have been an issue for his squad throughout the year. Most nights they had found a way to overcome it, but that wasn’t the case in this one.
Peters came out of the half with a lot of energy, scoring on their first two possessions, including an and-1 from McCullough that cut it to 7. Lewis scored again for Chartiers, giving him 10 points in the game and staying perfect from the field.
Miller answered with a triple as Peters Township cut the Chartiers lead to 6 early in the third. As he’d done all night, Davis answered once again, bringing his point total to 16 in the game. He also had 5 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 steals to go along with those points at that time.
Peters drained another three to make it a 5 point game midway through the third with Chartiers leading 45-40. That was as close as they’d get as Davis answered with a very difficult and-1 and freshman, Luca Federico, followed that up with a three ball, and just like that it was back to a 10 point lead.
Davis hit again by decelerating in the lane and letting the defender go by him for his 20th points of the evening. He isn’t the biggest guard by any means, but he uses his body so well to create space and he does a great job of changing speeds to keep defenders off-balance.
Peters continued to stay hot from three and they got it back to a single digit game, but Julian Semplice snagged an offensive rebound and got the putback to go. Semplice was everywhere in this one as well, scoring 13 points and pulling down 8 rebounds.
Lucas Rost and Julius Best traded threes in the final 20 seconds of the quarter as Chartiers Valley took a 54-41 lead into the final frame.
Both teams had shot the ball very well from the field to this point, with Chartiers Valley sitting at 60% and Peters Township at 52%, including 46% from three. Unfortunately for them, they were still shooting just 31% from the line.
Davis and McCullough traded baskets to start the fourth quarter. Danny Slizik scored on a layup off the feed from Davis and Thelk answered with another three for Peters. They were up to 50% in the game from long range.
The teams went back and forth for the next several minutes as Chartiers see-sawed between double and single digit leads, but with just over two minutes to go, Peters managed to score 4 quick points and get the deficit down to 7.
Chartiers had no intentions of letting Peters Township back in the game though, as Jayden Davis knocked down 2 free throws to bring his point total to 28 and give the Colts and 9 point lead.
Peters got some very late buckets to go, but this one was already over. Chartiers finished off a wire-to-wire victory, winning 73-66.
Chartiers has a rich basketball history, but that hasn’t been the case in recent years. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite, as they’ve really struggled the last few seasons. All of that officially changed tonight when Head Coach, Corey Dotchin, secured his first WPIAL title in his inaugural season with the Colts. I’ve been a huge fan of Dotchin all year, as I’ve applauded his ability to turn around a program in just one season. He proved tonight, as he’s done all year, that he’s truly one of the best coaches in the WPIAL.
This was Chartiers Valley’s first WPIAL title in 10 years. When asked how it felt to return the program to greatness Dotchin said simply, “It’s awesome, but the credit really goes to these guys (his players)”.
A good chunk of that credit had to go to senior, Jayden Davis, tonight. He finished the game with 28 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists, and 3 steals while going 11-17 from the field and 6-7 from the foul line. Davis is a career 2,000 point scorer. He’s been a varsity player since his freshman year and has always been a prolific bucket-getter. However, that never translated to championships. Davis spoke after the game about how he’s become a complete player and more than just a scorer saying, “I just had to learn the game. Keeping my teammates involved would make it a lot easier. Scoring 25 or 28, I obviously wasn’t winning that way, or I didn’t get a medal that way. I had to start trusting my teammates, and that’s what got me this medal right here”.
Both of these teams will be back in action next week as the PIAA tournament kicks off on Friday, March 7th.