The Obama Academy and Allderdice girls met Sunday in the first City League basketball championship held at Duquesne University’s UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
Different court. Same dominant Obama.
In what has become a theme this season, Obama Academy rolled to a 75-29 mercy-rule win against Allderdice to win its second consecutive championship and sixth in 12 seasons since the school opened in 2011.
It was the 23rd consecutive section win for Obama (17-4), which claimed each of its 12 City League games this season by mercy rule, with the average margin of victory being 42 points. The Eagles defeated Allderdice in the 2022 final, 58-40, and it was their eighth consecutive win against the Dragons (11-12).
“It feels good to end my high school career here,” Obama senior Ny’Asia Benton said. “I’m really proud of myself and my team.”
Benton and sophomore Taylor Phillips each scored 22 points for Obama, while senior Kimaya Williams finished with 12 points, 20 rebounds and 4 blocked shots. Bailey White, a 5-foot-3 freshman guard, scored a team-high 10 points for Allderdice, which was seeking its first title since 2020.
Obama, which won its 11th game in a row, beat Allderdice by 33 and 41 points in the regular season, so Sunday’s result was expected. Obama had two major advantages — experience and height. Obama starts three seniors, while Allderdice starts three freshmen and two sophomores and doesn’t have a senior on its roster. Two Obama starters stand 6-0 and 5-11. Allderdice, on the other hand, doesn’t have a player taller than 5-7 on its roster. Those differences played out like you would expect, with Allderdice committing 30 turnovers and Obama holding a 49-24 edge in rebounding.
“From the get-go, I was just thankful that we were able to overcome Westinghouse [in the semifinals] to get here,” said Allderdice coach Ellen Guillard, a former star player at Duquesne when she was known as Loui Hall. “We’re just thankful to get here and compete. I was telling the girls regardless of everything, we’re playing for experience. Everyone assumed that we were going to finish second because we didn’t have a lot of players and no one knew who we had. We didn’t have any seniors. We were just trying to fight. Get a fighting chance and play for experience and just give our best.”
Obama really didn’t need any other advantages in this game, but the Eagles did have another, and that came courtesy of Phillips and Benton. The two combined to make nine 3-pointers, with Phillips knocking down five and Benton four.
“The shots felt good, so we just kept shooting them,” Phillips said.
And that began, oh, just 14 seconds into the game when Phillips knocked down her first 3-pointer. Obama led, 20-8, after one quarter, but Allderdice was much more competitive in the second and eventually trailed, 36-20, at the half.
“I just kept saying, ‘Hey, we have nothing to lose. We have everything to gain. We’re not losing any players,’’ Guillard said.
After the break, Obama asserted its dominance. The Eagles began the second half on an 11-2 run which included five points by Benton, and they went on to outscore Allderdice, 39-9, in the second half. The mercy rule went into effect early in the fourth quarter.
Obama was 25 of 61 (40%) from the field in the game and Allderdice was 10 of 38 (26%). Both teams will try to qualify for the PIAA tournament main draw when they open up subregional play in the next two weeks.
Afterward, Obama coach Monique McCoy smiled when thinking about the enormous amount of success her program has had in its 12 seasons.
Said McCoy, “For me, it says so much because I was an assistant at Schenley, and when Schenley turned into Obama I remember the paper saying, ‘We’ll see what they can do.’ And I kind of took it as an insult because I knew the direction that this team and school was going. We knew we were going to have some bumps and bruises along the way, but we were going to build and eventually we were going to make it to this plateau.”
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at beverett@unionprogress.com.