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Sports

Turnovers Costly for SV Girls in Loss to North Allegheny

The girls basketball team fell to NA Thursday, but the Raiders continue to close the gap on the area's top teams

The Seneca Valley team continued to close the gap on the top teams in the WPIAL’s highly-competitive Section 3-AAAA.

Case in point: The Raiders’ 65-44 loss to playoff contender North Allegheny Thursday night was a five-point game until the final 12 minutes.

The loss served to illustrate how much the Raiders have improved the past season, and according to coach Rob Lombardo, it also showed how far they still have to go to catch the top teams.

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The Raiders led 17-15 after the first quarter, and trailed the Tigers 29-26 at halftime.

Seneca Valley was within a couple baskets of tying the score midway through the third quarter against a North Allegheny team which easily defeated the Raiders by big numbers twice last season.

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“Overall we’re pleased, but we still have a lot of work to do to get up there with the , North Alleghenys and ,” Lombardo said. “We can play against them, learn from them, but you can’t have 28 turnovers against teams of that quality.”

North Allegheny took control of the game in the third quarter, outscoring Seneca Valley 23-7.

“That one quarter was the difference in the game,” Lombardo said. “We played as well as we could, but we had 28 turnovers in the game, which I was not happy with. When you play a good team like North Allegheny, you don’t want to give them more possessions than they already get.”

Junior forward Alex Karika had a double-double for Seneca Valley, with 17 points and 12 rebounds. Also for the Raiders, sophomore guard Amanda Geiger had eight points and sophomore guard Karlei Fronzaglio had seven.

Kelly Brennan led North Allegheny (3-2, 10-2) with 27 points. Brennan scored 13 of her points in the third quarter.

Seneca Valley (1-4, 5-7) was coming off a thrilling 46-45 last Monday in which Geiger hit the winning jump shot at the buzzer to give the Raiders their first section victory this season.

Seneca Valley resumes section play at Butler (0-5, 2-10 ) at 7:30 p.m. Monday.

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