Kayla Cook has been the offensive focal point for the Jeannette basketball program for four years and a big reason the Jayhawks advanced so quickly from section also-ran to the WPIAL championship game.
With Cook struggling mightily against Seton-La Salle in the Class AA final Saturday, freshman Ciara Gregory picked up the slack and led the Jayhawks to their first WPIAL championship.
Gregory scored 14 points, including four free throws in the final minute, to cap a come-from-behind, 39-36 victory against Seton-La Salle at Palumbo Center.
"This team is not going to be denied and just because Kayla's having a bad day doesn't mean the rest of the team isn't going to play hard," Jeannette coach Janine Vertacnik said. "We fought every minute of this game, and at the end of this game, it was just a matter of how the ball was going to fall."
Jeannette (24-2) trailed by as many as nine in the first half but came back and took the lead, 30-29, with 4:30 to play when Cook — the school's all-time leading scorer and a Coastal Carolina recruit who finished 1 for 15 from the floor — hit a layup for her only two points of the game. From there, the lead changed hands five more times. Finally, Gregory converted a three-point shot foul with 52.7 seconds remaining to put the Jayhawks ahead to stay, 38-36.
"I was very nervous, and I just wanted them all to go in," Gregory said. "It was scary. Everything was going through my head. It was just crazy."
Jordan Dwyer had a chance to tie the game late for Seton-La Salle, but she missed a layup with 7.6 seconds remaining, and Jeannette senior Kirstie Cortazzo fell to the floor with the ball. Gregory closed it out by converting the front end of a 1-and-1 with 3.7 seconds left, then stole the rebound from a Rebels player and fired up a wild 3-pointer to run out the clock.
Katie Gattuso finished with a game-high 17 points and 10 rebounds for Seton-La Salle (20-6), which lost in the finals for the second consecutive year. The Rebels committed 20 turnovers and shot just 5 for 19 (26.3 percent) in the second half after Jeannette switched from its base man-to-man to a 2-3 zone defense after intermission.
"They really did a god job packing it in, a couple of kids missed some shots, and I think it got to them a little bit," Seton La Salle coach Bryan Bennett said. "We did a tremendous job on (Cook) holding her to two points, but it came down to us missing shots. But that's the game of basketball. Some days you're hot, some days you're not, and we just couldn't hit shots."
