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Almost everything — the individual matchups, the strengths and weaknesses of Reading and Hempfield, and calls and breaks and mistakes, forced and otherwise — pretty much evened out during Saturday's District Three Class AAAA boys' basketball championship game.
Everything except Trenity Burdine.
Burdine made four second-half three-pointers, each of them a dagger to Hempfield's heart, to lead the Red Knights to a 54-46 win at the Giant Center.
Both clubs move on to first-round games in the PIAA state tournament Saturday.
It was Reading's 14th district title, its third since 2003.
The Black Knights (27-1) had their undefeated season ended in their third appearance in an AAAA final.
They're still looking for their first district trophy.
This one was doable, despite Reading's pedigree and talent, if Hempfield had played great instead of just very good.
The Knights needed to handle Reading's trapping presses a little better, and needed to get more offense from its post players.
It's not like either of those things are easy to do. The Red Knights (27-2) come at you from all angles, play hard and play together.
Like so many great high school teams, they make you go faster than you want to.
"They just have very solid basketball players," Hempfield coach Warren Goodling said.
"The game's a little faster-moving at this level."
Still, the Black Knights gave themselves a fighting chance.
They defended Reading in the half- court, holding Burdine to four first-half points, and actually had fewer turnovers, 16-13.
Hempfield led 9-7 early on the first of Zach Sheetz' four three-pointers, and led 26-21 late in the first half of back-to-back threes by Sheetz and Christian Walck (18 points).
"We played the second quarter the way we wanted to play the whole game," Goodling said.
They played much of the third quarter — and this is both teams — like tiring fighters leaning heavily on each other.
Hempfield had eight straight empty possessions, and it was during that stretch that Burdine, a 6-foot-5 gazelle bound for Division I Siena, made the first two of his killer threes.
It was tied at 29 when Walck got to the rim and Burdine raked him hard across the arms, one of those layup-denying fouls. Except that no whistle blew.
Walck went down hard, for neither the first nor the last time, and seemed to take a few minutes to regain his bearings.
"It took a toll on my body, eventually," he said.
In the interim, Burdine scored on a drive and then, at the third-quarter buzzer, an outrageous fallaway three from the deep corner.
"A big-time play," Goodling said.
The Black Knights kept fighting. They got within 43-41 of two Taylor McDuffie free throws with 3:08 left.
Reading got a free throw from Delvon Brown with 2:08 left. He missed the second, beginning a gut-punch sequence in which Reading got the rebound and got it to, yeah, Burdine, who made a three from the top of the key.
Banked it in.
"It's not like he can't make that shot anyway," Goodling said graciously.
That made it 48-41, and it was launch-and-chase for Hempfield from there on.
Burdine finished with 20, four threes, four twos, no free throws.
Walck was just as good, scoring 18 points and making dazzling athletic plays, including a flying block of a dunk attempt by 6-4 Xavier Mumford that drew gasps from both rooting sections.
"He's just a very, very good player," Goodling said, "and he's only going to get better."
"I didn't think we played our best game," Walck said. "I wish we had, but Reading did the stuff they had to do to make us not play our best."
The good news for Hempfield is it has a week to bounce back.
"You're not going to get over this with one night's sleep," Walck said.
"By Tuesday or Wednesday we should be able to amp it up again."
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com.
