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Whitlock drives Belle Vernon over defending section champs

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BELLE VERNON – Belle Vernon coach Joe Salvino preferred the second start of the high school basketball season to the first.

Devin Whitlock scored a game-high 23 points and the Leopards used a strong second quarter to pull away from visiting Uniontown for a 67-41 win in the Section 3-AAAA opener for both teams Friday evening.

It was just the second slate of games for the 2020-21 season, which began Dec. 11 but was halted by Gov. Tom Wolf because of COVID-19 concerns the next day until Monday.

The Leopards did get in its opener in December, a 65-59 non-section loss to visiting Thomas Jefferson.

“Against Uniontown it’s a good win to start off section play,” said Salvino, who discussed getting back into the flow of basketball after the break.

“The first couple days were really hard,” Salvino said. “We had some Zoom meetings, went over some film but other than that we didn’t do anything. So first couple of practices were a little bit lax.”

The Leopards (1-1) seemed to be ready to play against the defending section champion Red Raiders (0-1, 0-1), jumping out to an early nine-point lead, but Uniontown whittled the gap to three.

Belle Vernon took a 19-15 advantage into the second quarter where it outscored the Red Raiders 19-7 to go up 38-22 at halftime. Whitlock had 16 points at the break.

The Leopards bumped the lead up to 49-30 after three quarters and pulled away in the fourth to kick in the mercy rule.

Salvino was impressed with Whitlock’s improvement from the opener.

“I like the way he took the ball to the hole, he took the ball strong,” Salvino said. “He did those things well. He didn’t settle for the three-point shot. I thought he did that too much in the TJ game. I thought he played well.”

Tyler Kovatch scored eight of his 12 points in the second half for Belle Vernon and Daniel Gordon added 10 points.

“I thought our intensity was a lot better throughout the whole game,” Salvino pointed out. “The TJ game we came out strong but we didn’t score in the third quarter and our confidence went right downhill so we stopped playing defense. That’s what really hurt us.

“In this game there were a couple lapses here or there, but for the most part I thought we played four quarters.”

Uniontown, which played without starting center Christian Perkins who coach Rob Kezmarsky said was unavailable for the game, was led by Demarr Lewis with 15 points. Brian Sykes added 10 points, all in the first half.

“They have a lot of guys back and Whitlock is one of the better guards around,” said Kezmarksy, whose team has an entire new starting lineup from last season. “They have some other good players, too. They hurt us defensively inside. We weren’t full strength size-wise.

“I told my players, last year we beat them by 27 early in the year but we only beat them by two the second time later in the season. So maybe we can reverse that this year.”

Kezmarsky was just glad to have his players out on the court competing for the first time.

“Tonight’s a good night for Uniontown and Belle Vernon just to play a game,” Kezmarsky said.

With the coronavirus pandemic ongoing, Salvino also stressed the importance of each game.

“God only knows how many of these games we’re going to get to play,” he said.

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