Marple Newtown’s Matt Gardler goes up for a shot in the second quarter between Garnet Valley’s Jack Krautzel, left, and Quinn O’Hara. (Pete Bannan – MediaNews Group)
By Matthew DeGeorge
It’s a team game, Matt Gardler and Jake Sniras would caution you Thursday night. Someone’s got to defend, to be ready to take a pass or to provide a feed.
But if you distilled the Central League playoff game between Marple Newtown and Garnet Valley into its purest essence, you’d be left with a lot of Gardler, a lot of Sniras and the quandary of whether a game of HORSE or one-on-one between them would be more compelling.
On the final tally, Gardler and Sniras were separated by one point. Their teams were separated by one point, too. And it was provided by Gardler, his buzzer-beating 12-footer in double overtime securing fifth-seeded Marple Newtown with a 69-68 win.
“Just try to get to the rim,” Gardler said. “We’re down by one, so I tried to do that there. My coaches always tell me to do that jump stop, pivot, pull up. That’s a move I’m trying to implant into my game. I practice that again.”
It’s Gardler’s second buzzer-beater of the week, having hit a 3-pointer at the horn to dispatch Penncrest on Tuesday. (Garnet Valley beat Penncrest on a buzzer-beater two weeks ago.)
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