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East Juniata foil Sayre’s Cinderella run; Will play in D4 Championship

COCOLAMUS. – Cinderella’s slipper  has just been shattered.

After upsetting the number one seed in the opening round of the District 4 boys basketball players, the Cinderella team of Sayre was looking to keep their season alive as it traveled to Cocolamus to battle a very inspired East Juniata boys team ranked fourth.

The Tigers shortly ended the Redskins season with a dominating

second half, winning 48-37.

With the win, East Juniata will travel to Williamsport Friday to battle in the Championship game.

Leading the offense for the Tigers was Dylan Wagner’s double-double finishing with 12 points and 14 rebounds. Wagner helped his team stick within striking distance in the first half when they trailed by as many as eight.

Wayne Dressler finished as the team’s leading scorer with 15 points.

Rounding out the double digit scorers for East Juniata was Tanner Barth with 13.

The Redskins offense was led by Zach Moore’s 12-point effort. All 12 of those points were from four triples.

“It was a back-to-back double figure game for him (Dylan Wagner). I think was his first two double digit game of the season,” said East Juniata coach Justin Hazel when asked about Wagner’s performance. “He’s come up big. We worked a lot yesterday on his turnaround jump shot. They got their big in foul trouble and then it was “Go to Dylan, Go to Dylan, Go to Dylan. Whether he makes it or not it gives you an opportunity. That was the game plan after the big went out. We tried to get him a touch and everything would open up from there.”

Trailing 20-16 going into the third, East Juniata came out on fire, taking the momentum and craving the boards to put them back in the game.

The first touch by the East Juniata offense went straight inside to Wagner. Wagner hit his first shot of the third, cutting it to a 2-point deficit.

Defensively, the Tigers shut the Redskins completely down.

Barth hit 1-of-2 at the charity stripe on the Tigers’ next possession, closing it to one.

With 6:43 still left in the quarter, Wagner gave his team the lead for the first time in the game on a turnaround jumper, 21-20.

From there, Barth hit a bucket to keeping the 11-point scoring run alive.

With buckets by Wagner again and Dressler, the Redskins were forced to call a time out as the Tigers went up by six points with 3:53 left in the period.

The time out did nothing to help Sayre as the East Juniata offense came out and finished the quarter going on a 7-1 run.

The run was highlighted by a off-balanced Dressler shot that hit glass and in as he fell to the ground.

The only Redskin point came on a free throw by Matthew Lane.

When the period came to an end, the Tigers were just eight minutes away from the comeback win, leading 33-21.

In the final stanza, the Redskins battled hard and made a few runs at the Tigers’ lead headlined by two  deep threes by Moore and one by Dom Fabbri.

But it was enough as the Tigers came up strong defensively when it needed to as they held strong for the 11-point victory.

Things started out slowly for the Tigers as the Redskins started out tough going up 15-7 after the first period.

East Juniata started to tighten its defense and held Sayre to only five points while it was able put in nine, cutting the Redskin lead to 20-16 going into the intermission.

With the Tigers win, they make their first appearance to the title game in the team’s history.

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