When it comes to winning WPIAL championships, no school has done it more often than Aliquippa, which is tied with New Castle for most titles all time.
Aliquippa has captured 14 of them in all, and five times has won back-to-back titles. But the Quips have never three-peated, something their coach hopes they can celebrate for the first time on Saturday.
“I think that would be awesome,” said Nick Lackovich, who has guided the Quips to four WPIAL titles and two PIAA titles.
Speaking of awesome, this will be a game featuring a guard matchup that might be the best of any of the six championships.
Two outstanding backcourt duos will go head to head when No. 1 and two-time defending champion Aliquippa (20-4) meets No. 2 South Allegheny (22-3) in the WPIAL Class 3A championship at 1 p.m. Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
While Aliquippa will shoot for title No. 15, South Allegheny aims for its first. The Gladiators have reached the final only one other time, falling to Ellwood City in the 2021 final.
“It’s a tremendous honor to make it to this game,” South Allegheny coach Tony DiCenzo said. “It’s been our goal to get here, and this is where we thought we’d be. We thought we were good enough to be in this game and we probably expected Aliquippa to be our opponent. The message after the [semifinal game] was, ‘Enjoy it, because it’s a great accomplishment. But we’re not finished yet.’”
The teams have appeared to be on a collision course all season and there are a lot of similarities between the two. Both teams went unbeaten in section play and neither has lost to a Class 3A team this season. Aliquippa boasts the No. 1 scoring offense (70.8 points per game) and No. 1 scoring defense (39.1 ppg) in Class 3A, while South Allegheny owns the No. 2 offense (67.9 ppg) and the No. 3 defense (46.6 ppg).
And then there is the fact that both feature terrific backcourts. Aliquippa, also the defending PIAA champion, is led by 6-foot-2 junior guards Josh Pratt and Qa’lil Goode, and South Allegheny is fueled by 5-7 senior guard Cam Epps and 6-1 junior guard Drew Cook. Pratt, Epps and Cook all surpassed 1,000 career points this season, with Epps and Cook actually doing it in the same game.
“Much like us, their backcourt is what makes them go with Pratt and Goode,” DiCenzo said. “Those are their top two guys. Now we get to see how our top two do against their top two, and that very well might determine the outcome of the game.”
Pratt, who has several Division I offers, leads Aliquippa in scoring with 22 points per game. He was the only sophomore in any class to be named first-team all-state a season ago. He has proven to be a big-game player, too, evidenced by him sinking seven 3-pointers among his 33 points in last year’s WPIAL championship and scoring 36 points in the PIAA championship. Goode was a starter on last year’s team but is in the midst of a breakout season in which he has given the Quips a steady secondary scoring option. He averages 14 points a game.
“They’ve been awesome,” Lackovich said. “I’ll put those two up against anybody.”
It won’t just be “anybody” on Saturday. It will be a fantastic duo consisting of Epps and Cook, who combined for 52 points in a semifinal win against Mohawk. Cook poured in 31 and Epps 21. On the season, Cook is averaging 21.6 points a game and Epps 18.7. Cook has averaged 25.3 points over three playoff games.
“You take it for granted. I’ll look back years from now and realize how special it was, but I don’t realize it in the moment,” DiCenzo said. “Their chemistry is amazing. They’ve been teammates since grade school. It’s been really fun to watch.”
Of course, this won’t be just a game of 2-on-2. The two guard tandems both get plenty of help. Aliquippa also features junior guard Antonio Reddic and junior guard-forward Marques Council. Among South Allegheny’s other top players are 6-4 senior forward Josh Jackowski and 6-3 senior center Camden Lewis.
What’s surprising is that the coach of the No. 1 seed and two-time defending champion doesn’t view his team as being the favorite in this matchup.
Said Lackovich, “If I was a betting man, I’d say we’re the underdog.”
Class 5A
While the championship matchup in Class 3A is likely the one most predicted, the Class 5A final is nothing of the sort.
No. 4 Chartiers Valley (22-3) will battle No. 6 Peters Township (18-7) at 7 p.m. at Petersen Events Center. Chartiers Valley will try to win its seventh title and first since 2015, and Peters Township will shoot for its first since capturing its only title in 2009.
These teams have been giant killers in the playoffs, with Peters Township upsetting No. 3 Uniontown in the quarterfinals and Chartiers Valley stunning No. 1 Montour in the semifinals.
“I think we’ve got some hard-working unselfish kids that put the team in front of their own egos,” Peters Township coach Joe Urmann said. “We found a little bit of playoff magic because there’s such great buy-in right now. The guys are just having fun.”
As much of a surprise Peters Township beating Uniontown was, Chartiers Valley beating Montour might have been at another level. The Colts have been very good in their own right, but had lost twice in the regular season to Montour, the state’s No. 1-ranked team in Class 5A who some have regarded the best team in the WPIAL regardless of class.
“They’ve bought into everything that me and the coaching staff put into place that would help us be successful,” first-year Chartiers Valley coach Corey Dotchin said. “It’s a new staff, new system, new philosophy, new players. From Day 1, they have been all in. They believed what I was telling them. I told them that if we do the things that we can control, the sky’s the limit for this team because we have all the pieces. Once they got going, they believed more and more.”
Chartiers Valley, the runner-up to Montour in Section 4, has won seven games in a row, while Peters Township, the runner-up to Baldwin in Section 3, has won five of its last six games.
This is a rematch of a non-section game on Feb. 1 in which Chartiers Valley won at Peters Township, 71-57. Chartiers Valley led by 1 point at the half before outscoring Peters Township, 41-28, in the second half. It was a memorable game for Chartiers Valley star Jayden Davis, who pumped in 38 points, including the 2,000th of his career.
Not allowing Davis to go off again will be key for Peters Township in this one. And it won’t be easy. Davis, a 5-11 guard and the team’s only senior starter, ranks among the WPIAL’s scoring leaders with 23.2 points per game. He scored a game-high 20 in the 47-44 upset of Montour.
“It’s a tall task because he’s a really good player,” Urmann said. “Obviously, he scores at all three levels, he gets to the line, he has a nice mid-range game, he’s very good with the ball, and his supporting cast is spectacular, as well. They’re playing really well. Corey’s doing a great job. His kids are playing so hard. But we’re up for the challenge.”
Davis’ supporting cast includes junior guards Danny Slizik and Julian Semplice and promising freshman forward Luca Federico. Semplice scored 18 points against Peters Township in the first meeting.
Peters Township will likely need a strong game from 6-foot junior guard Dylan Donovan, the team’s top scorer at 19.1 points per game. Donovan scored 22 points, including 16 after halftime, in a 58-52 overtime win against No. 10 Mars in the semifinals, and also had 22 in the previous matchup with Chartiers Valley.
“He’s been awesome,” Urmann said. “He’s really developed his game to where he’s not just a scorer, but also a distributor. We ask a lot out of him with ball-handling responsibilities and he logs a lot of minutes for us. He’s just a super kid. A lot of kids say they love basketball, but this kid eats, breathes and sleeps basketball, which is a rarity.”
Donovan and senior guard Nick McCullough have WPIAL championship experience, as each saw time off the bench when Peters Township lost to Penn Hills, 70-65, in the 2023 Class 5A title game.
“They’re a good team, an experienced team, a well-coached team,” Dotchin said. “Joe had them in the championship and semifinals a few times. I think we were able to wear them down [in the first meeting] in the second half with our depth and had some shots go down. But I expect it to be a completely different mindset from them coming into this one.”
Brad is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at beverett@unionprogress.com.