DALLAS TWP. — To get to a place she’s never been before, Rebecca Prociak believed she had to take a different path.
It wound up leading King’s to the MAC Freedom Conference finals.
Prociak dominated the inside with 20 points and seven rebounds Wednesday while constantly breaking up passes as a defender, her old Holy Redeemer teammate Sam Rajza scored 13 and King’s made a 74-63 victory over area rival and tournament No. 2 seed Misericordia look easy in a MAC Freedom semifinal at the Anderson Center.
“It means so much,” Prociak, a senior, said. “We haven’t won here (at Misericordia) since 2015. To win here, in my senior year, it’s a great feeling.
“This is the farthest we’ve ever been.”
The 16-10 Monarchs will play for the conference crown against regular-season champ DeSales at 1 p.m. Saturday in Center Valley, with the winner earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament. Misericordia fell to 20-6.
“We had a mindset going in,” Rajza said, “that it doesn’t matter if we didn’t get home court, it doesn’t matter if the game is here (at Misericordia), that it doesn’t matter where it is. We’re playing our game every single possession.”
That resolve held true to the very end.
With the outcome well in hand and around a minute left, Rajza took off sprinting downcourt against a Misericordia press against the inbounds under the King’s basket. Emily Morano hit her in stride and Rajza deposited the statement layup for a 68-49 King’s lead, and the student body from King’s that made the road trip sound like a home game exploded in delight.
“It’s such a crowd pleaser, that play,” Rajza smiled.
Right after that, King’s was back in its press defense, as hustling Emily Kriston and former Hazleton Area star Mackenzie Yori flustered the Cougars into their 15th turnover.
“We just wanted to use some token pressure,” King’s coach Caitlin Hadzimichalis said. “We didn’t expect to take those shots, we were supposed to run clock a little more. But they’re young, they’ll learn.”
What Misericordia learned Wednesday was the relentless guard play of King’s can be overwhelming on both ends of the floor.
Yori scored eight points in the second quarter, Morano hit a 3-pointer after producing a three-point play and Rajza drilled a last-minute trey to go with a harassing defensive effort that turned an 11-11 tie at the end of the first quarter into a 37-24 King’s lead at halftime.
“We made a gameplan going in: we need to ball-pressure their guards,” Rajza said. “We’re more of a guard-heavy team. We got steals and it led to baskets.”
Yet, it all led back to underneath the basket.
That’s where Prociak was powering her way to spinning layups, positioning herself to rip away rebounds and swiftly passing off to outside shooters as the center of the Monarchs’ inside-out ball movement.
The 5-foot-11 forward hit nine points in the second quarter, scored four more in the third to help keep King’s in a double-digit lead and finished with six more in the fourth period as the Monarchs punched their ticket to the Freedom finals.
Yet, it was her defense that really stole the show.
Playing against 6-1 Jordan Barth, 6-foot Tess Zamolyi and, at times, 6-1 sub Nora Tracey, Prociak went over, under and around those players to keep swatting passes away.
“Becky, she put in an effort,” Hadzimichalis said. “I think she had at least three possessions where she dove to get deflections.”
Instead of fronting Misericordia’s giants with help or trying to re-direct them by bodying up, Prociak put together a more subtle — and frustrating — method of defense.
“It’s something I planned to do,” Prociak said. “They have a height advantage. They’re much bigger than me. Coming into the game, they’re at the top of the league in rebounds. We knew right from the beginning, if we were going to come in here and do anything, the only way to stop them inside was to not let the ball get to them.”
It got to the point where Misericordia seemed out of ideas, even when the Cougars pulled within six points on Alyssa Bondi’s 3-pointer in the final minute of the third quarter and within seven when Zamolyi hit a 3-pointer in the first minute of the fourth.
“Even when they made a run,” Hadzimichalis said, “we had an answer.”
The answers came with back-to-back steals and layups by Prociak and Morano to boost a four-point lead to 10 in the second quarter; Rajza’s three-point play at the end of the third; and consecutive 3-point daggers from Kriston in the fourth.
And now, there are no questions anymore if King’s can find its way to a Freedom Conference title game.
“Great time for me,” Prociak said.
MAC FREEDOM SEMIFINALS
King’s 74, Misericordia 63
KING’S (74) — Emily Kriston 2 0-0 6, Mackenzie Yori 4 3-3 13, Kayla Dillinger 1 0-0 3, Sam Rajza 6 0-0 13, Rebecca Prociak 9 3-4 21, Emily Morano 6 2-2 15, Sarah Heiskell-Mann 1 0-0 2, Zoe Stein 0 1-1 1. Totals 29 9-10 74.
MISERICORDIA (63) — Tessa Zamolyi 10 1-2 23, Erica Haefele 1 0-2 3, Alyssa Bondi 5 2-2 16, Gianna Delfino 2 2-2 7, Jordan Barth 4 4-6 12, Elizabeth Fasti 0 0-0 0, Morgan Haefele 0 0-0 0, Melina Santacroce 0 0-0 0, Nora Tracey 1 0-0 2. Totals 23 9-14 63.
King’s`11`26`14`23 — 74
Misericordia`11`13`16`23 — 63
Three-point goals — KC 7 (Yori 2, Kriston 2, Dillinger, Rajza, Morano); MIS 8 (Bondi 4, Zamolyi 2, Delfino, E. Haefele).
