Dave Mackall stories, Page 30

From the Petersen Events Center to Greensburg Salem High School, it was a drastic change in scenery for the WPIAL champion Mars Fightin’ Planets. No matter, with each game at this stage of the season comes higher stakes, and the Mars boys basketball team was ready once again for a...

Ligonier Valley, the only Westmoreland County-based high school whose sports teams compete outside the WPIAL, is getting a rare opportunity to impress its western neighbors in boys basketball. The District 6 Class 3A runner-up Rams will meet Beaver Falls, the WPIAL fifth-place team, in a PIAA first-round game at 4...

For a time, it looked as though Seton Hill’s improbable, late-season run in women’s basketball might continue Wednesday night. Then No. 14 IUP’s offense started to click midway through the third quarter. Carolyn Appleby scored 28 points and Brittany Robinson scored 16, including the 1,000th of her college career, and...

Latrobe opened the PIHL Penguins Cup playoffs with an emotional victory Monday night, riding the energy of a large, vocal crowd and the offensive expertise of Alex Walker. The sophomore scored a goal and assisted on three others to lead the IceCats to a 4-1 victory over Hampton in a...

These two schools don’t particularly seem to care much for one another. It showed in their latest meeting on the hardwood Friday night, where top-seeded Ligonier Valley met No. 2 Richland in a wild District 6 Class 3A boys basketball championship game at Mt. Aloysius. When the final horn sounded...

EBENSBURG — It’ll be Ligonier Valley and Richland in a rematch of the District 6 Class 3A boys basketball championship this season after both posted victories Tuesday night in the semifinals. By most accounts, it was anticipated that the two top-seeded teams would meet in the title game Friday at...

Luckily for Ligonier Valley, free-throw shooting didn’t figure in the outcome of the top-seeded Rams’ 75-55 boys basketball victory Saturday over visiting Central Cambria in a District 6 Class 3A quarterfinal. They made just 6 of 13 attempts (46 percent) to Central Cambria’s 10 of 11 (91 percent). From the...

Sewickley Academy led from start-to-finish in dispatching Jeannette from the WPIAL boys basketball playoffs Friday night at Canon-McMillan, but the Panthers weren’t skating to victory. In the fourth playoff meeting in as many years between the schools, defending Class 2A champion Sewickley Academy survived Jeannette’s furious fourth-quarter rally to come...

Ligonier Valley’s District 6 playoff schedule in boys basketball will begin a day later as part of a decision to delay most boys and girls games because of a winter storm warning Wednesday. Top-seeded Ligonier Valley (20-2), the defending Class 3A champion, will open the playoffs on Saturday, instead of...

LORETTO — Andy Toole implored his team to play with more heart. He stalked the sideline, clapping emphatically, as he often does, trying to ignite a spark, any hot spot that might fuel his players’ desire. This was St. Francis (Pa.), the Northeast Conference favorite and RMU’s longest-running rival that...

From observer to leader, Kason Harrell has been mapping out a road to his future while attending Purdue Fort Wayne, an obscure basketball school in the nation’s heartland that, for now, serves as his second home. The former Hempfield standout more than three years ago arrived at the Summit League...