By MICHAEL S. BURICH
Special to The Review
MINERAL RIDGE - East Palestine's girls basketball team was plenty aware of who wasn't on the bench in a 42-15 loss to LaBrae on Monday in the opening round of the Div. III sectional tournament at Mineral Ridge.
And like much of the last quarter of the season, the players knew that it was close to impossible to fill the void left behind by senior point guard Emily Casto.
"She's the team leader and she wants people to live up to their potential," sophomore guard Paige Peterson said. "She's definitely a good player. She's definitely a good friend. The thing that is hard is it's not her fault she's out. It's tough knowing she wants to play, but just physically is not able to."
Peterson has been starting at point guard since a lingering illness wiped out the end of Casto's senior season roughly six games ago. Casto, who has been hampered by illness throughout her career, missed five of the Bulldogs last six games. Arguably the best ball handler and maybe best all-around player in the Inter-Tri County League upper tier this season, Casto averaged 15.5 points a game in the 16 contests she appeared in.
"I feel bad because this is her sport and who she is," East Palestine senior Harley Huston said. "I'm sure it's hard for her, but it has been hard for us because we just wanted her to play. I think we'd all rather have her take one of our spots then to see her being sick."
She was too sick to even be with the team on Monday, but East Palestine coach Walt Harriott said that shouldn't be used as an excuse.
"It would be nice to have her, but she wasn't here," Harriott said. "I'm not going to use that as an excuse. (LaBrae) just outplayed us tonight. Our shooting percentage had to be in the single digits."
Harriott wasn't too far off in his assessment. The Bulldogs (8-13) shot 12 percent from the field. LaBrae, however, wasn't much better in the first half as the Vikings (12-9) made only eight of 36 shots to go in the lockers with a 22-8 lead.
In the second half, the Vikings' inside players started to pick it up and East Palestine could only watch as their season which featured a win over ITCL upper tier co-champion Springfield came to a screeching halt.
It also underscored Casto's importance to the team. In the last five games without her in the lineup, the Bulldogs averaged 35 points per game. And that's with a 61-point total against Wellsville in the mix.
Peterson served as Casto's understudy throughout this season and found it hard to take over her spot in the starting lineup.
"I just went in there and did what I could and tried to follow what she had taught me over the years," Peterson said. "It's not easy to replace her, but we tried."
Next up for LaBrae will be a date with All-American Conference Blue Division champion Campbell Memorial on Saturday. The Vikings lost to Campbell by the scores of 65-60 and 67-50 in the regular season.
Game notes
- East Palestine seniors Bre Hull and Kali George wore three pairs of socks each - One white, one gray and one black pair.
-Youngstown Ursuline won Monday's opener 60-29 against Girard. The Irish played a heavily parochial schedule this season and basically return the same group which lost to United in last year's district final. Against Girard, the team looked vastly improved on the shooting front from what they displayed a season ago. The Irish will meet Springfield Local on Thursday in the sectional final.
