Mikey Crawford steps up to lead Lincoln Park over North Catholic in PIAA playoffs

FOX CHAPEL — After narrowly defeating Uniontown in the second round of the PIAA Playoffs, Lincoln Park was back in business Friday night as the Leopards survived a three-point barrage from WPIAL Class 4A rival North Catholic to defeat the Trojans 89-74.

For the third time this season, the Leopards and Trojans faced off against one another with the result remaining the same but it was not all because of Lincoln Park’s normal offensive weapons.

Mikey Crawford has been a mainstay in the Leopard's starting rotation over the course of the season playing a key role in the team’s success throughout the postseason. Normally, he plays second fiddle in offensive production with guards Brandin Cummings and Meleek Thomas pacing the team in scoring throughout the year.

But tonight, it was a different story as the senior was an offensive force in the Leopards' victory over North Catholic Friday night at Fox Chapel High School.

Crawford was a force down low in the paint as he made his presence known, picking up several offensive boards while having an effective scoring touch as he finished with 14 points in the first half and 23 points throughout the contest.

“Teams will start to pay attention to our stars,” Lincoln Park head coach Mike Bariski said following the game. “But Mikey can flat-out play. He could be one of the best rebounding guards in the WPIAL and he finishes because he is so athletic. He is a Division I defensive back so when he gets contact it doesn’t bother him and he gets to the basket so he can finish.”

Along with Crawford’s effort on the offensive end, after a quiet first half offensively, Cummings and Thomas both played key roles in the team’s offensive success in the second half.

Lincoln Park was held without a three-pointer until the third quarter of play before Cummings hit four triples out of the break before finishing with 16 points overall.

Thomas also got in on the three-point action as he nailed back-to-back three-pointers in the third quarter with the pair each finishing with 12 points in the third quarter of play.

“We love to play fast and then our guys sped it up,” Bariski said. “We didn’t swing the ball and look to see what they were doing, we just attacked them. Those guys can really shoot the fallaways when they are moving at full speed up and down the court."

Outside of the team’s offensive success, the Leopards had a hard time defending the three-point shot in the first half of play as North Catholic hit nine triples in the first 16 minutes of action while knocking down all of their six of its shots from the field in the second quarter of play from beyond the arc.

That impressive feat from long distance gave the Trojans life heading into the locker room as they trailed by just four points.

In the second half, the Leopards found some success in limiting the long-range shot in the second half of play due to defensive adjustments as they held the Trojan’s Jude Rottmann to just five points in the final two quarters while allowing seven three-pointers in the second half.

“We tried to stay attached in the first half,” Bariski said. “We made a bucket and then North Catholic would sprint down the floor and when we would get back, we were looking for our guys that we thought that we had instead of picking up the first guy down. We corrected that in the second half and didn’t want to give them any room to breathe and then we switched everything because we weren’t switching ball screens in the second half and that worked a little better.”

Other than the tough sledding with the team’s perimeter defense, Lincoln Park forced North Catholic to turn the ball over more than 20 times throughout the game which allowed the Leopards to play their game in transition and convert going downhill.

After a slow pace to the team’s offense in the second quarter, with the team’s ability to continue to create turnovers on the defense end allowed Lincoln Park to play more in transition.

“We preached all this week that we needed to step up on defense,” Crawford said following the game. “The last two games we were talking about how they scored a lot of points and we wanted to limit that this week so all week we worked on defense and it showed today in our ability to cause turnovers.”

With the victory on Friday, Lincoln Park sets itself up with a rematch of the WPIAL Championship game as it will take on Hampton on Monday. The time and location for the PIAA semifinal round is still to be determined.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Mikey Crawford steps up to lead Lincoln Park over North Catholic in PIAA playoffs