The last game for District 2 basketball teams this season is Thursday night in the first of three days of Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association state championships in Hershey.
NEPASportsNation.com editor Tom Robinson, who covers and writes about District 2 basketball for the website, has once again been predicting the outcomes of games throughout the state tournament after also picking all the games in the District 2 tournament.
Robinson’s prediction for Thursday game is below.
PIAA PLAYOFF PREDICTION
By Tom Robinson
CLASS 3A FINAL GIRLS GAME
Dunmore by 3 over River Valley
WHAT TO EXPECT
As should be in the case in a state final, Dunmore runs into a team with impressive credentials. River Valley has won 20 straight and swept 3 games from Homer Center, the team that crushed Montrose, 47-13, Monday to reach the Class 2A state final.
On the season as a whole, River Valley’s collective results may be slightly more impressive than Dunmore’s, but the level of play the Lady Bucks have reached as of late could trump that.
Dunmore’s last four-plus games, beginning with a 25-1 finish against Holy Redeemer in the District 2 championship game, have been on a new level. The addition of North Carolina commit Ciera Toomey to a lineup that put together an unbeaten Lackawanna League Division 3 season and earned the top seed in the district essentially without her, has made a difference.
The recent surge includes state tournament Mercy Rule routs of quality opponents Bloomsburg and Lake-Lehman, beating the Wyoming Valley Conference overall champion Lady Knights by 39 when they had not lost by more than 6 all season.
The Lady Bucks were 0-for-13 on 3-pointers in Monday’s state semifinal against Lancaster Catholic, but were so strong in every other aspect of the game that it did not matter.
The 2019 Lady Bucks had an incredible state tournament run coming into Hershey where they fell just short. Similarly, the Holy Cross boys had an outstanding tournament going before being off their game against a strong opponent in Tuesday’s state semifinals.
To become District 2’s first girls basketball state champion since Bishop Hoban in 1999 and the Lackawanna League’s first since Riverside in 1987, Dunmore will need to maintain its recent level of play for one more game. A better 3-point shooting night would help, but the Lady Bucks do so many fundamentals well – protecting the ball, defending, rebounding – that they could be ready to handle that monumental task.
RECAP
The state semifinals were the first of seven postseason round where we picked less than half of the games correctly.
PIAA semifinal boys pick: 0-1 (0.0 percent)
PIAA semifinal girls picks: 2-2 (50.0 percent)
Total PIAA semifinal picks: 2-3 (40.0 percent)
Total PIAA boys picks: 16-3 (84.2 percent)
Total PIAA girls picks: 20-6 (76.9 percent)
Total PIAA picks: 36-9 (80.0 percent)
Total postseason boys picks: 45-9 (83.3 percent)
Total postseason girls picks: 47-11 (81.0 percent)
Total postseason picks: 92-20 (82.1 percent)
