Charlton, Wallace lead Dallas over Hazleton and into girls basketball tie

DALLAS — They drew up gameplans, set their defense and preached about preventing Lauren Charlton from taking outside shots.

In the end, none of it really mattered.

Charlton was too dogged, too determined, and too accurate to let the Hazleton Area Cougars keep the upper hand.

Hot-handed Charlton drilled five 3-point field goals and finished with 23 points Monday, smooth Deanna Wallace added 17 more at Dallas High School and Dallas dumped Hazleton Area, 61-52 to create a late-season tie for first place in the Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1.

“It feels so amazing,” Charlton said. “We’ve been really motivated this past week.”

The victory allowed Dallas to move into a share of the Division 1 lead with Hazleton Area, as both teams are 10-2 in league play with two games remaining. It also avenged Dallas’ first loss of the regular season, a 54-37 hammering at Hazleton Area in a Jan. 13 game the Cougars led 15-3 after a quarter and by 30 points at halftime.

“The last time we played them, that’s not us,” Charlton said. “That’s not how we play.

“That loss stung a lot.”

This time, Charlton did most of the stinging.

She went off on a personal 9-2 run to open the second quarter, popping a pair of 3-pointers and converting a three-point play to give Dallas a 25-19 advantage, then added another trey midway through the period to lift the Mountaineers into another six-point lead. That came after Charlton’s first 3-pointer gave Dallas its first lead, 14-13, late in the first quarter.

“I feel like a lot of times, my shot’s been off,” said Charlton, senior who’s now recovered from serious shoulder injuries in games against Hazleton Area that cut each of her previous high school years shot. “These past few games, I’ve been hitting my groove a little bit.”

Charlton, who will play at Penn next season, hit her first five 3-point attempts before missing her final two tries from long range — while quickly turning Hazleton Area’s dream of locking up at least a tie for the regular-season division title into the Cougars’ worst nightmare.

“She was lighting it up,” Hazleton Area coach Joe Gavio said, “especially when they needed her. “We talked and talked about, ‘Don’t let her shoot the 3.’

“Charlton’s Charlton.”

That was good news for Dallas, as Charlton began the second half by popping her final 3-pointer and then driving the lane for a layup to give the Mountaineers a 14-point lead, before Morgan MacNeely’s bucket boosted it to a 16-point advantage.

“She’s lights-out when when gets a look from the arc,” Dallas coach Kelly Johnson said of Charlton. “She’s playing with such confidence right now. That just lifts the whole team up.”

It showed.

Wallace played Charlton’s sidekick, firing in three 3-pointers of her own and providing a second, hard-to-stop scoring option for Dallas.

Wallace knocked down a trey and hit a layup as the Mountaineers shrugged off an early six-point deficit and closed within 13-11 with 2:50 left in the first period.

“They took our hit in the early part of the game,” Gavio said.

And Wallace’s bucket and trey — again in succession — in the second quarter boosted the Dallas advantage to 10 points. Wallace also helped Dallas stave off a late Cougars rally by scoring her final seven points in the final quarter, and regularly dribbled Dallas away from danger by slicing through Hazleton Area’s vaunted press defense time and again.

“Deanna Wallace played amazing,” Charlton said.

Hazleton Area hardly called it quits.

Marissa Trivelpiece gave the Cougars a chance, scoring 12 of game-high 25 points in the second half while carrying the offense.

Oliva Wolk added five foul shots in the third quarter as the Cougars closed within eight points entering the fourth, and Kyra Antolick’s 3-pointer cut the deficit to 58-52 with 71 seconds on the clock.

But Dallas didn’t let the Cougars creep closer.

“We didn’t play badly,” Gavio said. “They just played better. They wanted it. We wanted it, too. They played well. They’re a good team.

“We still control our own destiny.”

But now, so does Dallas.

And if the two finish the season still tied by the end of this week, they’ll meet again in a playoff for the division championship — and could wind up meeting a fourth time in the four-team playoff for the WVC overall crown.

“They’re thrilled,” Johnson said of her Mountaineers. “We had a lot of motivation coming into tonight. We know we didn’t play our best game when we were at Hazleton. We know it. We wanted to prove to ourselves, and to everybody, we could be competitive with them.”

Dallas 61, Hazleton Area 52

HAZLETON AREA (52) — Marissa Trivelpiece 8 5-6 25, Kyra Antolick 1 1-2 4, Olivia Wolk 0 5-8 5, Brooke Boretski 3 0-4 8, Faith Grula 3 2-2 8, Julia Mooney 0 0-0 0, Jaya Franek 0 0-0 0, Carley Krizansky 0 0-0 0, Isabella Colyer 1 0-0 2. Totals 16 13-22 52.

DALLAS (61) — Morgan MacNeely 2 4-6 8, Haley Habrack 2 0-1 4, Lauren Charlton 8 2-3 23, Deanna Wallace 7 0-0 17, Claire Charlton 4 1-3 9, Bella Hill 0 0-0 0. Totals 23 7-13 61.

Hazleton Area`17`10`12`13 — 52

Dallas`16`20`11`14 — 61

Three-point goals — HAZ 7 (Trivelpiece 4, Boretski 2, Antolick); DAL 8 (L. Charlton 5, Wallace 3).