By Jim Hintelmann
TOMS RIVER – St. John Vianney and Immaculate Heart Academy played two thrilling games in the NJSIAA Non-Public A championship games the past two years, with the teams splitting the contests.
There was nothing close, however, in Saturday’s third straight meeting in the title game with the Lady Lancers putting on a defensive clinic in routing the Blue Hens, 72-31 for its second straight title and a state tournament record 16 team championships overall.
IHA upset SJV, 45-43, two years ago, but the Lady Lancers rallied from a 14-point halftime deficit for a 54-50 triumph last year. It was all SJV, however, in Saturday’s contest.
SJV, led by guards Vanessa Pinho and Gigi Caponegro, made effective use of its traditional full court press as it forced 26 turnovers, including 12 in the first quarter alone.
“I take great pride in picking up my defense and doing what it takes to make my team win,” said Pinho. “However, we have some unfinished business left and want to win it all in the Tournament of Champions. We lost to St. Rose in last year’s TOC.
“Last year, we had to rally from 14 points down in order to beat IHA,” she said. “This time we wanted to set the tone early so we didn’t have to play catch up again.”
“It felt great to come out here today and make a statement,” said senior Kelly Campbell, who scored 20 points, including six three pointers five rebounds and five assists. She had 17 points in the first half alone.
“It was a credit to my teammates who ran the plays and opened up the lanes for me,” said Campbell , who will be playing at DePaul University next year. “I was shooting a lot more than I usually do.”
SJV’s defense never gave IHA a chance to establish its offense. The Lady Lancers scored the first 10 points of the game and, for all practical purposes, it was all over at that point.
SJV built the lead to 20-5 after the first quarter and increased to 40-9 by halftime,
“We tried to trap them early and wanted to force players that were not comfortable handling the ball,” said SJV coach Dawn Karpell. “We did that quite well and we had them playing at a faster pace than they wanted to.”
“SJV did what we expected them to do said IHA’s Megan Swords, who had 12 points and 12 rebounds. “I think we were a little nervous in the first half. We played better in the second half ,but by then it was too late.”
IHA (20-7) played better in the second half and scored seven of the first 10 points of the third quarter, but it didn’t make any difference.
“We didn’t feel that comfortable at the start of the quarter,” said Karpell, “ but we made a couple of adjustments, hit a couple of shots and got our pressing defense going again.”
SJV’s success wasn’t a surprise, since it had all five starters back from last year’s state championship team.
“This team does what it needs to do in order to win,’ said Karpell. “It’s a privilege to coach at team like that.”
IHA coach Steve Silver, who has played SJV five times in the past eight years, was highly impressed with this year’s Lady Lancer team.
“It is as good as any of the other SJV teams we played against,” said Silver.” They kept the pressure on from the start and we had difficulty on the inbounds pass and getting our offense going.”
SJV’s lone loss was an overtime setback to nationally-ranked Villa Marie Academy (Pa.) in a Florida Christmas Tournament, but Campbell miss that game because of an injury.
