Foxes Defeat Number One Upper St. Clair

Boys' Basketball

Keith Barnes, Tri-State Sports & News Service, January 22, 2021

Fox Chapel senior guard Kent Baldauf might have entered the real estate market.

In fact, he found a really nice patch in the left-wing corner behind the 3-point line in the Upper St. Clair gymnasium that rather appeals to him.

“I should,” Baldauf said. “Throughout the game I wasn’t making anything but in the fourth quarter I just decided I wasn’t going to worry about it and just start shooting.”

Once he found his home on that little patch of the hardwood, there was no stopping him.

Bauldauf converted five 3-pointers in the fourth quarter for 15 of his game-high 18 points, which helped Fox Chapel (5-2) hold off a furious Upper St. Clair (6-1) comeback as the Class 6A No 4 Foxes handed the No. 1-ranked Panthers a 72-70 loss for their first defeat of the season.

“I jokingly told Kent he had the easiest job because all he had to do was shoot it and I give those guys credit getting him the basketball,” Fox Chapel coach Zach Skrinjar said. “We always talk about one more pass and that’s what it was, but I also thought the timing of his shot was excellent, so we would walk some time off the clock, have a couple of ball reversals and, boom, hit him.”

It wasn’t only that he made five 3s in the fourth quarter. It was when he made them.

Every time Upper St. Clair rallied to get back into the game, Baldauf stuck another one from long range that would extend the Fox Chapel lead. The Panthers, who trailed by as many as nine in the fourth quarter, cut it to a one-possession game on three separate occasions midway through the period, but each time, Bauldauf hit one to extend the Foxes advantage.

“I give a lot of credit for them and [Baldauf] in the fourth quarter, that was the difference in the game. There is no doubt,” Upper St. Clair coach Danny Holzer said. “We had to give up something and we like to trap and get after people and, if guys get open and they make shots, it can put you in a tough

Bauldauf may have made most of the critical shots down the stretch, but he wasn’t the only Fox Chapel shooter with multiple 3-pointers. Junior Jake DeMotte helped the Foxes stay in it during the first half when he hit 2 of 3-pointers and six of his 13 points as the team drained 11 from beyond the arc.

And Fox Chapel needed every point it could muster, especially in the first half when the teams combined for three ties and 11 lead changes.

“When you make 11 3s, you put yourself in a good position to win,” Holzer said. “We started slow, we couldn’t get off to a good tart and they were shooting the ball well and that’s why they won.”

Upper St. Clair was miserable from the field in the first and third quarters, which allowed Fox Chapel to take the early lead. The Panthers converted just 4 of 13 (30.8 percent) from the field in the first quarter and an abysmal 3 of 18 (16.7 percent) in the third, which in one of the major reasons why Fox Chapel took a 53-49 lead into the fourth quarter.

Despite that, Upper St. Clair still almost came back and tied it up despite trailing, 62-53, with 4:50 left. Ethan Dahlem and Luke Gensler each scored eight of their 14 points in the fourth quarter and Fox Chapel made several critical errors in the final two minutes that helped the Panthers get back to within two three times in the final minute.

By that time, however, Upper St. Clair was forced to foul after every made basket and Fox Chapel’s Eli Yofan and DeMotte each converted both ends of 1-and-1s to maintain a two-possession advantage.

“These guys, in the last four games have really embraced the solid defensive principles and knowing their teammate has their back on defense,” Skrinjar said. “I was pretty confident that if we played the last 16 minutes of the second half the way we played the first 16 minutes in the first half, we’d have an opportunity to hang around at the end of the game and win it.”

First Published January 22, 2021, 10:19pm