Pleasant Valley took the opening tip-off and raced toward the basket in Thursday night’s game against Parkland. The two teams spent the next 45 seconds crowded under the basket with Pleasant Valley players putting up shot after shot – six of them to be exact – and pulling down rebound after rebound.

Eventually, Parkland got the rebound, came to the other end of the court and scored.

It was a precursor to how the night would go for the Bears who lost 55-40 to the Trojans.

Pleasant Valley wouldn’t get its first basket until there were just 2:00 left in the first quarter, when Madison O’Neil finally hit. The only other basket of the opening quarter came from Riley Wagner with :16 left. That cut Parkland’s lead to 14-4 and Pleasant Valley wouldn’t get any closer for the rest of the night.

“Anytime you shoot 16-percent from the floor, it’s going to affect you,” said coach Nadia Gauronsky. “I think our girls did a good job trying to battle back but it’s tough to come back from that.”

Parkland’s Ashlyn Fritzinger hit two foul shots with 3:59 left in the second quarter to put Parkland up by 18, but the Bears showed that they weren’t quite done. Pleasant Valley rattled off seven unanswered points, including a three-pointer from Breanna Clark. By halftime, Pleasant Valley was down, 27-15.

The second half started with the Bears looking to battle back, but another cold streak that saw them go over five-minutes without a basket set them back and Parkland opened up a 44-24 lead after three quarters. Cameron Caffrey hit two three-pointers in the final eight-minutes but Parkland’s lead was too much for Pleasant Valley to overcome.

If there was a bright spot for Pleasant Valley, it was the job it did rebounding against a team that had a distinct size advantage.

“They have two big girls inside (Lindsay Berger and Kassidy Stout), so I thought we would have to get one good shot and be done. We were getting a lot of rebounds but unfortunately, the rebounds we got we weren’t able to convert into points,” said Gauronsky.

As the season enters the phase where teams are jockeying for playoff positions and district seeding, the loss to Parkland put a dent in things for Pleasant Valley. Gauronsky sees the loss as a missed opportunity but not something that her team can’t come back from.

“We know that we have to recover,” said Gauronsky. “We can’t think about it and we can’t dwell on it but we know that it was a missed opportunity standings-wise for us. The girls have just got to move forward and try to do a better job down the road.”

CHANGE OF VENUE ... The game was originally scheduled for tonight, but was moved up by a day. Because of a wrestling match at Parkland High School, the game was also moved to Orefield Middle School, the former home of Parkland basketball prior to the building of the new high school just a short distance away.

BALANCE ... Pleasant Valley’s tough night shooting didn’t hit just one player, it hit all across the roster. In the end, the scoring was pretty balanced with Madison Rosenberg leading the way with 10 points, followed by Clark with nine and O’Neil with eight.

PLEASANT VALLEY

R. Wagner 1-0-0-2, Caffrey 2-0-0-6, O’Neil 3-2-2-8, A. Wagner 1-0-0-3, B. Clark 4-0-0-9, A. Clark 0-0-0-0, Rosenberg 5-0-2-10, Schwenk 1-0-0-2, TOTALS 17-2-4-40

PARKLAND

Parilla 0-0-0-0, Fritzinger 1-2-2-5, Rothwell 2-0-0-4, Kennedy 2-3-4-7, Courter 5-5-6-15, Shivok 0-0-0-0, Stout 6-4-6-16, Fogt 0-0-0-0, Wilkinson 0-0-0-0, Berger 3-2-5-8, Yeboah 0-0-0-0, TOTALS 19-16-23-55

Pleasant Valley 4 11 9 16 - 40

Parkland 18 9 17 11 - 55

Three-pointers: PV – Caffrey 2, A. Wagner 1, B. Clark 1; Pa. – Fritzinger 1.