BERWYN — Conestoga girls basketball senior Ryann Jennings is so hot right now that any snow pack would melt with just her walking by it.
Jennings continued her late season blitz by scoring 40 points to help guide the 11th-seeded Pioneers past No. 22 Upper Merion, 65-40, in the first round of the District 1 6A playoffs on Friday.
Jennings recorded her second 40-point game in the last week, going for 47 in a Central League semifinal victory over Radnor in double overtime. She now has 114 points in her last three games.
“I’m just playing my game and my team is playing really well too, so it’s paying off. We’re playing really well at the right time,” said Jennings.
“She’s been playing really well the last couple of weeks,” added Conestoga coach Ken Doyle. “The whole season she has been fantastic, but the last couple of weeks she has been rising to the occasion now that each game is so meaningful. It’s been playoffs for the last five games and she has been so locked in and refusing to lose.”
The streaking Pioneers won their 14th game in a row. They advanced to the second round where they will visit sixth-seeded Spring-Ford on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
“I expect a great game,” said Doyle. “They’re a very strong program, traditionally, one of the best teams in the state, not just the district. So, we’ll have our hands full. We’ll bring our best effort and give it all we’ve got.”
Jennings didn’t show any ill effects from Conestoga’s run to the Central League Tournament title, scoring the first two baskets to get them off quickly.
The Vikings trailed, 9-8, before Jennings personally outscored UM, 11-2, to end the first quarter with a 20-10 lead. She ended the stanza with an acrobatic 10-footer on the baseline as she was fouled and completed the three-point play to end with 15 points in the first.
UM senior Kennedy Coles tried to match Jennings in the first. She had six of her team-high 21 points in the opening eight minutes.
“The thing about Kennedy as a player is she’s a game-changer,” Upper Merion coach Jen Stilwell said of her 1,000-point scorer. “And the girls look up to her so much, very much the same way as the Conestoga girls look up to Jennings. Next year, we have fill the holes for the three seniors who leave us (Coles, Fuqua and Lorelei Bonifanti). Kennedy has also given some of these girls confidence and strength and the ability to see that they can be true basketball players.”
Jennings slowed down a touch in the second, as Upper Merion held her to four points, but then she became a facilitator, finding open teammates to knock down shots.
“In the second quarter, I could tell that they were pinching in on me, so I knew when I caught it I could just go and find my teammates because they were collpasing in on me,” said Jennings.
Natalie Garzio had five points as the Pioneers led by as much as 31-15 late in the second.
Senior Levayda Fuqua registered four straight points, but Garzio halted the Vikings’ momentum by banking in a three-pointer at the buzzer to put the Pioneers up 34-19 at halftime.
If Jennings started the game hot, she was absolutely nuclear to begin the second half. She went on a devasting scoring spree, registering all but three of the team’s 22 points in the third as she from inside and out. Conestoga ended the third with an 11-0 spurt to seize a commanding 56-29 advantinge going into the fourth. Jennings was an amazing 8-for-8 in the quarter with a trio of three-pointers.
“She is a phenomenal player,” said Stilwell. “With the exception of playing Maggie Thompson of Owen J. (Roberts), she’s probably one of the better players we’ve ever seen. She’s a game changer. We went from 2-3 to man to 2-3 looking for anything in an effort to stop the bleeding, but we couldn’t. She’s going to be a really good player in college.”
Jennings finished her night with one more basket in the fourth as she finished the game going 15-of-22 from the floor as the Pioneers cruised into the second round.
The Vikings wrap up their season at 16-9 as they take one more step for a program that was winless a few years ago.
“Obviously, you’re going to have your ups and downs,” reflected Stilwell. “This year, more than ever, we had more ups. The downs that we’ve had, we realized we had to fix them. We’ve never won a PAC playoff game and that says something about our team. That’s just them believing they could.”
Conestoga 65, Upper Merion 40
Upper Merion 10 9 10 11 — 40Conestoga 20 14 22 9 — 65
Upper Merion: Fuqua 2 6-6 11; Coles 10 1-4 21; Callison 0 0-0 0; Edge 2 4-4 8; Hirshon 0 0-0 0; Nguyen 0 0-0 0; Bonifanti 0 0-0 0; Zeiss 0 0-0 0. Totals: 14 11-14 40.
Conestoga: Jennings 16 4-4 40; Neary 4 1-2 10; Brown 1 0-0 3; Cruz 0 0-0 0; N. Garzio 2 0-0 5; Hamil 0 0-0 0; Cook 0 0-0 0; Michalek 1 0-0 2; Lynch 1 0-0 3; Gallagher 1 0-0 2; Mariotti 0 0-0 0. Totals: 26 5-6 65.
Three-point goals: Fuqua, Jennings 4, Neary, Brown, N. Garzio, Lynch.
