For as long as every player on South Allegheny’s basketball team is alive, nobody will ever be able to tell them that they couldn’t do it.
Because they did it.
For the first time in school history, the Gladiators lifted a WPIAL championship trophy after defeating two-time defending champion Aliquippa (20-5) in a heart-pounding WPIAL Class 3A title game at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center, 37-35. This was South Allegheny’s second WPIAL championship appearance, having lost a 53-50 heartbreaker against Ellwood City in the 2021 Class 3A title game.
“I’ve been blessed the last six or seven years with unbelievable talent,” said Gladiators coach Tony DiCenzo. “It’s just surreal right now. … I’m kind of at a loss for words. I’m just happy for these guys. They deserved it. They earned it. They put in all the work. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
With 14 WPIAL championships in their program’s storied history, the mighty Quips were attempting to break a tie with New Castle for the most WPIAL titles of all time. Instead, the sweet taste of victory belonged to No. 2 South Allegheny (23-3), as the Gladiators snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the game’s final minute.
After leading for virtually the entire game, top-seeded Aliquippa saw its advantage shrink to just one point after junior guard Drew Cook made three clutch free throws for South Allegheny with 34 seconds to play. The Gladiators then trapped Quips guard Marques Council in the corner on the ensuing inbounds pass, and an errant pass by Council made its way right into the hands of South Allegheny senior forward Josh Jackowski, whose go-ahead layup sent the Gladiators fans in the stands into a frenzy.
“Out of the timeout, coach [DiCenzo] asked, ‘What do we want to do? Gamble or foul?’ And we wanted to gamble,” Jackowski said. “I saw my teammates go set the trap in the corner, I sagged off a little bit and waited for him to make a mistake, and it ended up right in my hands.
“I was a little surprised at first, but I was just like, ‘I might as well lay it in.'”
Star junior Josh Pratt led all scorers with 18 points for Aliquippa, while senior guard Cameron Epps scored a team-high 11 points for South Allegheny to go with 10 points from Cook. Two extremely close friends on and off the court, Epps and Cook became 1,000-point scorers on the same night earlier this season, and their legacies are now forever set in stone together in Gladiators lore.
For Epps, the win gives him bragging rights over older brothers Antonio and Bryce, two former South Allegheny standouts who helped elevate the program from a perennial bottom feeder into one of the top teams in Class 3A.
“This is the first time I’ve been able to do something that they never did in their high school career,” Epps said. “This one is for them.”
As for Cook, Saturday’s victory marked a full-circle moment. One of the top two-sport athletes in the area — he caught 80 passes for a WPIAL-leading 1,490 yards and 17 touchdowns last fall — Cook has made it his mission to honor the legacy of his older brother, Tony, who died from cancer in 2021 at the age of 16.
“I’m just in awe right now,” Cook said. “I’m just happy for teammates. They limited me very well tonight, but I’m proud of my guys for stepping up and taking over the game. … It definitely feels good to know I’m living out [my brother’s] legacy.”
Qa’lil Goode knocked down a 3-pointer to give Aliquippa an early 7-2 lead, then the Quips took a 13-9 advantage into the second quarter. After a back-and-forth quarter, Pratt knocked down a jumper to stretch Aliquippa’s lead to seven with 2:45 left in the half, but a pair of layups by Epps and Cook trimmed the deficit to three at 21-18 going into the break.
Jake Uher scored on a tough layup while drawing a foul to start the second half for South Allegheny, but he couldn’t convert the 3-point play to tie the score. Moments later, Camden Lewis corraled an offensive rebound then scored on a putback to give the Gladiators their first lead of the game, 22-21.
A 3-point play by Pratt put the Quips back on top, then the teams traded buckets throughout the rest of the third quarter, with Aliquippa taking a 31-26 lead into the fourth.
“We had the game, and we let it go,” said Quips coach Nick Lackovich. “If you would have told me coming in that we would have held Cook and Epps to [21 points combined], I would have taken that all day long. Cook averages that by himself. It should have been good enough.
“It’s a tough one to swallow, but it’s not over. We’re still the defending [state] champs until somebody buries us.”
Epps started the final quarter by knocking down a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to two. A layup in transition by Goode gave the Quips a 35-31 lead in the final minute, then Cook got fouled while shooting a 3-pointer with 34 seconds remaining. The multi-sport standout calmly stepped to the line and buried all three free throws, then South Allegheny’s trap in the corner forced a turnover that led right to Jackowski’s game-winning layup.
Jackowski made 1 of 2 free throws with 10 seconds remaining to give the Gladiators a two-point lead, then Aliquippa still had a chance to tie the game or win it coming out of a timeout. But Pratt was unable to get a shot off due to Epps’ hounding defense, and the ball rolled out of bounds as time expired.
The rest, as they say, is history.
“We knew we were in for a battle, but we were confident that we could compete with them,” DiCenzo said. “We’ve been in these moments a handful of times over the last four or five years, and we’ve always fallen short. In those moments, that failure was to prepare us for what we were going to experience today.
“I can’t wait to get back [to Glassport]. We’ve been trying to get this [championship] to them for the last handful of years. … I can’t wait to take that trophy back there.”
Steve is a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at srotstein@unionprogress.com.
