George Guido: Plenty to celebrate for Mars fans

By: HSSN Staff
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 | 11:39 PM

Folks in the Mars area still are celebrating a great high school basketball season.

And who could blame them?

Last week, the girls team won the PIAA title with a thrilling victory over Archbishop Wood, 36-33. A steal and a layup by Tai Johnson with 4 seconds left sealed the win.

It was the first time a team from Butler County won a PIAA girls basketball title since 2000, when Karns City knocked off Bishop Hoban.

It was a sweet victory for Mars coach and Deer Lakes graduate Dana Petruska, who completed her 30th head coaching season with 440 career victories.

Petruska will be inducted into the Alle-Kiski Valley Sports Hall of Fame on May 19.

On the boys side, the Planets made the state finals, losing to Abington Heights. It was the second appearance in the finals over the last three seasons. Mars lost to Neumann-Goretti in 2016.

Mars also won the WPIAL title over Franklin Regional on March 2.

As if the great Mars run needs validation, the Planets beat the Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 WPIAL playoff seeds along the way.

And in another interesting factoid, of the 27 games Mars played against Pennsylvania teams, 22 were against playoff teams.

Thus far, the only boys team with Butler County ties to win a PIAA basketball title is East Brady in 1980.

The Bulldogs defeated Darby Township for state gold.

Planets standout Robby Carmody finished his career seventh in WPIAL all-time boys career scoring with 2,390 points.

In the title game against Abington Heights, Carmody passed Wampum's Don Hennon, who was the WPIAL's all-time scoring leader from 1955 until Valley's Tom Pipkins took over the top spot in 1993.

Pa. natives rule

With Villanova's decisive victory over Michigan on Monday night for the NCAA title, it marked the first time that the reigning NCAA and NIT title teams were from Pennsylvania.

Penn State defeated Utah for the NIT crown last week at Madison Square Garden.

Villanova is coached by Jay Wright, a graduate of Council Rock North, outside of Philadelphia.

Penn State is coached by Pat Chambers, who played at Philly's Episcopal Academy.

In 1955, Duquesne won the NIT, but La Salle came up short in the NCAA title game against San Francisco.

A year earlier, La Salle won the NCAA title, but Duquesne lost the NIT finals to Holy Cross.

Eastern Pennsylvania high school graduates have ruled the NCAA women's basketball ranks.

The last six NCAA ladies champs' coaches have Pennsylvania ties as statewide correspondent Dave Burman notes.

Notre Dame, winners of a thrilling title game over Mississippi State Sunday, is coached by Muffet McGraw, a 1973 graduate of Downingtown's Bishop Shanahan.

Last year's winner, South Carolina, is coached by Dawn Staley, who went to Dobbins High in North Philadelphia.

Connecticut, winner from the four previous seasons, is led by hall of famer Geno Auriemma of Norristown.

The ol' 5-2-6-4-8-9 double play

In a national high school baseball invitational tournament recently, the scorecard had a rare third-to home-to short-to second-to center field-to right field double play to end a game.

In the semifinals between John Curtis Christian of River Ridge, La., and American Heritage of Plantation, Fla., Curtis led 2-1 with Heritage runners on third and first with one out.

The Heritage batter hit a grounder to the Curtis third baseman, who faked a throw to first to catch the runner off third. The third baseman's throw to catcher found the runner retreating but was thrown out by the shortstop covering third.

By then, the runner at first had rounded second.

The shortstop threw to the second baseman to start another rundown.

The second baseman threw to the center fielder to make the apparent tag at second base to end the game. However, the ball was dropped and the right fielder tagged the runner to end the game on the wild play.

George Guido is a Valley News Dispatch scholastic sports correspondent. His column appears Wednesdays.

Tags: Mars