Gettysburg raced out to a 20-5 first-quarter lead and extended the lead to as large as 29 in the first half in a 74-58 win over Dickinson in one of the Centennial Conference semifinals Friday night at Bream Gym on the campus of Gettysburg College.
Mackenzie Szlosek led all scorers with 16 points to finish with exactly 1,000 points for her career. Shinya Lee added a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds. She also had three assists and a blocked shot. Alayna Arnolie added 14 points, three assists, and three steals, and Emily Violante rounded out a quartet of double-digit scorers with 11 points.
For Dickinson, Clair Marion led the way with 14 points, while Caitlin Blackman added 13 points and seven rebounds.
A pair of Szlosek triples and five points from Arnole staked Gettysburg to a 12-0 lead in the game. Abby John finally got Dickinson on the board with a second-chance layup at the 3:51 mark of the first quarter. Arnolie, however, responded with a 3-pointer to push the lead to 13. After Caitlin Blackman capped a trey of her own, Szlosek hit a layup, and Kimberly Hopkins drained a corner triple just before the period expired for a 20-5 advantage.
The Bullets then started the second quarter on an 11-3 run to extend the advantage to 22 on an Arnolie jumper with 6:42 showing. The lead swelled to 38-10 on an Arnolie trey nearly four minutes later before a Marah McHugh three-point play with 49 ticks remaining made it a 43-14 game. Ella Smith responded with a layup to make it a 27-point game at the break.
The lead ballooned to 33 just 2:32 into the third quarter on a Shinya Lee jumper. A Szlosek fast-break layup made it a 62-24 game with 2:55 to play in the period, giving the junior 999 points for her career. Gettysburg took a 65-31 lead into the final 10 minutes.
Dickinson closed to within 66-40 before Szlosek thought she had her 1,000th point on a steal-and-layup with a foul called at the 4:18 mark, but the officials ruled the foul took place before the shot, giving Gettysburg the ball under the basket. On a second-chance opportunity, Szlosek once again drew a foul, but this time was shooting two free throws. After missing the first, she hit the second with 3:07 remaining for the milestone point.
Sunday’s championship game will take place in Baltimore versus Johns Hopkins. This will be the third straight year that the two teams have met for the title. Game time on Sunday is 3 p.m.
Swarthmore upends Gettysburg men in CC semis.
Swarthmore withstood an early 11-4 start by the Bullets and eventually used a 25-9 run to open up a double-digit lead late in the first half, lifting the fourth-seeded Garnet to an upset of the top-seeded Bullets in the 2024 Centennial Conference semifinals in the first game of Friday night’s doubleheader in Gettysburg Friday evening.
Nate Williams led the Bullets with a career-high 27 points, including hitting 10 of 11 free throws.
Vinny DeAngelo led Garnet players in double figures with 23 points to go with six rebounds.
Baskets from four different players helped Gettysburg open up an 11-4 lead 6 minutes, 23 seconds into the contest. Swarthmore countered, however, with five straight points to close to within two just 37 seconds later. The Bullet lead pushed back out to five when Aidan Mess hit a pull-up jumper to make it 16-11 with 10:27 remaining. However, a Vinny DeAngelo 3-pointer on the other end started the game-changing run. A Nyle Coleman 3-pointer with 8:15 remaining gave the visitors their first lead at 18-16. The lead swelled to 36-25 on two Devin Burger free throws with 1:33 showing before Gettysburg closed the half on a 5-2 stretch.
A Nate Williams completed a three-point play at the 17:10 mark of the second half, trimming the margin to 38-33 as the Bullets attempted a comeback. A Ryan McKeon jumper made it a three-point game a minute later. But Swarthmore stretched the lead back to nine with an 8-2 run over the next 3:18. After the Bullets closed the deficit once again to four on a Williams steal-and-three-point-play with 12:27 remaining, but the Garnet then scored the next six to make it a double-digit game again. A DeAngelo 1-and-1 extended the lead to 61-47 with 7:52 to play, but Gettysburg had one more run in it, pulling to within 63-56 with 5:09 on the clock. The lead got pushed back out to 13 with 1:53 showing, but an 8-2 burst made it a 76-69 game on a Williams 3-pointer with 1:12 to play, but the Bullets could get no closer.
Swarthmore will once again travel to Johns Hopkins for the championship game on Sunday at 12 p.m. It is the sixth straight year the two teams have played for the title.
Gettysburg will have to wait until Monday to see if its resume is good enough for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
These articles originally appeared on the Gettysburg College website.