TOWAMENCIN- Up against the reigning state champs, the Knights lack of tight defense, especially on the perimeter, along with too many turnovers had them trailing for most of the game in the loss to the Patriots.

The North Penn Knights (1-1) lost to the Archbishop Carroll Patriots (2-0) 69-57 in the home opener for the Knights.

The first quarter was fast paced with the ball moving back and forth up the court.  Grace O’Neill got the night’s first points to give the Patriots a 2-0 lead.  Carley Adams got rid of that early deficit with two straight buckets and then Alaina Mullaly found Val McGriff with a nice assist in the paint as the Knights went up 6-2.  The Patriots worked their way back as O’Neill tied the game at 6 with a layup.  She had 6 points in the first quarter.  The Patriots had a 13-10 lead as the clock began to approach zero until Rachel Dunn picked up the rebound, after having her initial shot blocked, and made the shot at the buzzer as the Patriots had a one-point lead at the end of the first.

Then, Erin Sweeney of the Patriots took the game over.  The Patriots made 6 threes in the second quarter, 5 of them came from Sweeney who found the hot hand.  Sweeney had 17 points in the quarter and 23 for the game.  The Knights went into halftime down 38-27, after a 25-15 second quarter score.  To put this into perspective, North Penn tries to keep their opponents to 40 points or less a game.

“Imagine my alarm at halftime when I go in and we gave up thirty-eight in the first half.  You’re not going to win games that way.  And they know it, that’s the one good thing about having a senior strong team is that without me even having to say anything, they know,” Coach Carangi said.

The Knights started the second half with a 6-0 run that cut the deficit to 38-33.  Mullaly took the assignment of guarding Sweeney and did an outstanding job as Sweeney was held to 2 points before exiting the game with an apparent ankle injury.

“We knew, our defense, we needed to make a small change and that’s just putting me at face guard and it really shut her down and unfortunately she had to get out of the game cause of an injury but before that point we were really handling her well and forcing their other players to play around not having her as an open shooter all the time,” Mullaly said.

Even with the 6-0 run, the Knight, could not claw all the way back as the Patriots took a 54-44 lead into the 4th quarter before their eventual 67-57 win.  The Patriots finished the night with 8 made three-point field goals.

The Knights will get a chance to forget about this game tomorrow as they travel to Neshaminy for a date with the Redskins.

“It’s a great thing we play tomorrow night, hopefully we can shake this one off and get back in the win column but at the same time, we don’t have much time to correct what we did wrong tonight, so we’ll go from there, and like I said, the experience should hopefully help us and we want to play tough teams cause it’s going to hopefully prepare us for the postseason,” Coach Carangi said.

North Penn: Doran 2 pts, Plaugher 3 pts, Strobel 4 pts, Dunn 5 pts, Early 6 pts, Adams 7 pts, Lindsay 14 pts, McGriff 16 pts

Archbishop Carroll: Wilson 6 pts, Grant 8 pts, Dougherty 8 pts, Mostardi 8 pts, O’Niell 16 pts, Sweeney 23 pts