By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
ATLANTIC CITY — Any basketball coach worth his salt will tell you that playing great defense leads to good offense.
That was certainly the case on Tuesday night as Middle Township held Our Lady of Mercy Academy to just 18 second-half points — including just six in the fourth quarter — to win 53-36 in the first of two Cape-Atlantic League Tournament semifinals played at Atlantic City High. The No. 2 seeded Panthers advanced to Saturday’s championship game at noon at Egg Harbor Township High by dispatching the sixth-seeded Villagers for the third time this season. Middle will square off against No. 5 Holy Spirit, a 58-54 upset winner over top-seeded Wildwood Catholic Academy in the other semifinal.
OLMA (13-12, 4-8 Cape-Atlantic American) got to within 22-20 early in the second half, but then Middle went on a 9-0 run that featured 3-pointers from seniors McKenzie Palek and Isabelle Toland. The Panthers took a 31-20 lead halfway through the third quarter, and the Villagers were forced to play catch-up the rest of the way.
“OLMA has a good team and they have been playing well, Brian (Coyle) does a great job with that group. We knew they weren’t going to go away. One of the things we talked about was, good teams are going to make runs at you, but I thought we stayed patient and found a couple of layups — we kind of strung together about four baskets in a row,” said Panthers longtime coach John Leahy. “It starts with — and we’ve been talking about it all year — stringing together stops. You can weather storms if you are stringing together three or four stops in a row. We did a good job on the defensive end and the offense started coming around.”
Middle’s big focus was trying to stop OLMA’s outstanding sophomore power forward, Khalia Lewis, and for the most part the Panthers were successful. Lewis had a team-high 10 rebounds, but was limited to just six points. That task fell on the shoulders of Palek, who got a lot of help from Middle’s guards crashing down into the low blocks anytime Lewis caught the ball deep.
“I thought (Palek) was outstanding. Lewis is a really good player and a tough matchup, but Kenzie is just one of those kids, you can put her on anybody and she’s tough enough and smart enough to make it hard on people,” Leahy said. “I thought their other kids did a nice job of making some shots and making some plays, especially early. Our defense was pretty solid, and Kenzie was fantastic on the defensive end. And she scored in double figures, and we’re a different team when she’s getting into double figures. It’s amazing how when you’re totally engaged on the defensive end, your offense starts to come around.”
“Really just stay big and push her out of the paint as much as we could. We would dig down from the wing and that was a quick way to get the ball out of her hands because she would kick it back out. I think we did really well with that,” Palek explained of the Panthers’ defensive philosophy. “Offense definitely feeds off defense, and defense feeds off of offense, so when you start off strong on both ends it kind of just comes together and you get a flow the whole game.
“We stayed composed,” she continued. “We have to be able to take a punch, especially when we’re not on our home floor. We have to know that other teams are capable of doing that, but we just got one right back and stayed ahead.”
Composure was a big point of emphasis for a team looking for its first league championship in nearly a decade. Middle’s last CAL title came in 2016, when the Panthers went 25-4 and advanced to the South Jersey Group 2 semis.
“We knew we had to be composed from the beginning. We knew what we were up against, but we also knew we could handle it,” Palek said. “I think we were composed throughout the game, and part of that was our energy, but everybody just settled in and did what they could do. This definitely means a lot. We’ve made it to the semis for a couple consecutive years but we never made it to the finals, so it’s exciting to get that chance.”
A big reason why Middle (21-5, 10-2 CAL American) is headed to Saturday’s championship game is because of junior guard Reagan Powell, who scored a game-high 25 points, including hitting two of the Panthers’ five 3-pointers. She also went 5-of-6 from the line and added five rebounds, an assist and a steal. She’s averaging 16 points per game and has scored in double figures in seven straight games.
“She’s a huge player for us and she’s stepped up a lot throughout the year,” Palek said. “She’s a big help on defense and offense, she really is a two-way player. She gets great looks and creates offense for us.”
“Reagan has been fantastic. I think early on in the season, all of us, and Reagan, were probably settling for too many threes. I know she hit a couple tonight, but she only took about five or six,” Leahy said. “She’s making a commitment to getting the ball to the basket, and as a result she’s getting to the foul line, and she’s a pretty good foul shooter. That’s how you score a lot of points.”
Now Middle turns its attention to Holy Spirit on Saturday and a chance to win the league championship, something that would mean a lot to this group, Palek said.
“(Winning on Saturday) would show who we are and the dedication and hard work we’ve put in throughout the years, especially this past year, and it will show the growth in a lot of our girls because we’ve all stepped up a lot in order to get here,” she said.
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 2 Middle Township vs. No. 5 Holy Spirit, Cape-Atlantic League Tournament championship game at Egg Harbor Township High, Saturday, noon. OLMA hosts Haddon Township on Thursday at 4 p.m.
