Hempfield Holds Off Ephrata

In absolute crunch time, with the game on the line and the clock winding down, when Hempfield needed a big bucket Thursday night, the Black Knights went to the paint.

There, Orianna Edmond and Lauren Moffatt delivered.

Edmond scored all 10 of her points in the pivotal second half, including a pair of money fourth-quarter lane hoops, and Moffatt scored a teamhigh 12 points, including the go-ahead bucket on a shot in the key, and the host Knights fended off Ephrata 40-34 in a nonleague girls basketball game in Landisville.

Moffatt had nine rebounds and Edmond pulled down eight boards, helping Hempfield outrebounded Ephrata by a wide 31-17 margin.

“Weknewwehadsomesize against them,” Knights coach Kendra Merrifield said. “So that was our game plan from the start.”

Hempfield (7-1 L-L, 9-3 overall) was playing for the first time since clinching the outright Section One championship earlier in the week, the Knights’ second title in a row. Ephrata (5-1, 6-3) is in a first-place tie with Elizabethtown in the Section Two hunt.

Crossover games don’t count toward a team’s league record this season. But Thursday’stilt—eventhough it didn’t count in the league standings — featured a pair of first-place teams.

Ephrata got the quick jump out of the chute, barreling to an 11-2 lead as Jasmine Griffin had an early 3-pointer, transition layup and conventional three-point play. Merrifield burned two firstquarter timeouts to settle her troops.

Hempfield’s Autumn Cook beat the first-quarter horn with a wing trey and the Knights were within 13-7. But Griffin’s 3-ball early in the second quarter stretched Ephrata’s lead to 16-7. Griffin had a game-high 17 points.

Ava Baer helped Hempfield get back in the game. She coaxed in three jumpers, and her foul shot with 3:07 to go in the half knotted the game at 18-18, as the Knights finally caught the Mounts.

Moffatt’s layup off a nifty give-and-go feed from Cook put Hempfield up 20-18, but Ephrata’s Olivia Fedorshak scored at the glass in the waning seconds and the Mounts drew even at 22-22 at the break.

That’s when Hempfield unleashed its inside attack. Saddled with foul woes in the first half, Edmond went right to work at the glass in the third quarter. She and Moffatt had back-to-back inside moves and Hempfield snared a 26-22 lead.

Undaunted, Ephrata took a 29-26 edge when Brynn Adams splashed back-to-back 3-pointers late in the third. Edmond hit a pair of free throws and she scored at the glass to give Hempfield a 30-29 lead through three quarters.

After Griffin knotted the game at 32-32 with 6:01 to go on a pretty pull-up jumper in transition, Moffatt and Edmond immediately made their presence felt in the paint. Moffatt’s layup gave the Knights the lead for good, 34-32, with 4:41 to go, and Edmond scored off a drive at the rim for a 36-32 cushion.

Merrifield said the secondhalf plan was to isolate Moffatt and Edmond on either side, and hope one of them was catching and finishing. They both did.

“We had some chances there at the end, but Hempfield is a team with a lot of experience playing against big-time schools in big-time games,” Ephrata coach Brian Cerullo said. “They’re big. They’re strong. They’re physical. And they killed us on the glass.Thatwasthedifference: Their inside game.”

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