TOWAMENCIN – Jess Huber is on fire. The North Penn girls basketball team is on fire. And Pennridge had nothing to extinguish either on Thursday night. In a game that looked like it would be close from the beginning, the North Penn Knights (17-2) ended up blowing out the Pennridge Rams (6-15) 59-26. The Knights needed a little warming up in the first half, but in the second half the Rams could not keep up.

Senior Jess Huber started off the first quarter draining a 3 point shot. The Rams followed each shot that the Knights had with a shot for themselves. With Huber having multiple 3s the Knights began to pull away. Toward the end of the quarter shots were being missed equally by both team, but the Rams had a lot more offensive pressure than the Knights. The Knights ended the first quarter with a 15-8 lead.

“Our strategy was to pick them up on defense and be aggressive, and on offense just play our game. I think we executed that better in the second half, in the first half we kind of let them do what they want on offense,” said Huber.

The Rams had trouble keeping up with senior Irisa Ye once she found her rhythm draining 3 pointers. With about 4 minutes left in the quarter the Rams caused an ‘and 1’ on Ye bringing the score to 21-14. Huber and Ye together put 7 more poinst on the board, ending the quarter 29-16.

“I thought overall the game was really good. I really think the second half we did a lot better than we did in the first half. I thought Pennridge played pretty well, they had a lot of shots in the first half. I thought we still scored a lot of points but we missed a lot of layups in the first half,” said head coach Maggie DeMarteleire.

By the end of the third quarter, the Knights separated from the Rams, extending their lead to 50-19.

“I think in the first half we were a little slow and we weren’t ready to play, but in the second half we really stepped it up, our defense especially we were getting on help line more, and I think that really translated into our offense. Jess and Irisa were knocking down everything tonight and it helped the team out a lot,” added Senior Sam Carangi.

With a 30-point lead, the 3 seniors, Ye, Huber and Carangi, were taken out the game, giving the girls on the bench a chance to play.

“I think we cleaned it up in the second half, we played better defensively, and I thought we played better on offense. I told the kids our motto this year was to improve one percent every day, and do everything right, especially the things we worked on in practice. The first half wasn’t really like that, but the second half was,” said DeMarteleire.

SCORING

NP: Irisa Ye (24), Jess Huber (23), Jess McKenzie (6), Sam Carangi (2), Jenny Hulmes (2), Aarti Boghara (2)

PR: Brooke Bachtle (7), Jill Anderson (7), Sam Muredda (6), Corinn Mart (2), Rose McCormick (2), Emilee Cramer (2)