In Pittsburgh, The Pine-Richland Rams Are Getting More Attention Than The Los Angeles Rams

Pine-Richland basketball player, Dan Petcash (3), attempts a three-point shot against Butler High School on January 29th 2019.

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Yesterday, The Pine-Richland Rams Boys basketball team defeated The Butler Boys basketball team by a score of 95-76. The Rams were looking really nice as they made 16 3-pointers and shot 64 perent from behind the arc. 

In sports, one of Pine-Richland's biggest rivalries is against Butler. The fact that Pine-Richland's Boys basketball team played one of its best games of the season against Butler, at Butler's house, is pretty impressive. All you have to do is look at Pine-Richland's student section's Twitter account and Butler's student section's Twitter's account to know how heated the rivalry is when they play each other in either sports, especially Boys basketball.

Even though Butler might have lost to Pine-Richland by 19 points in yesterday's matchup, don't think that Butler is all of a sudden really bad. Butler can easily beat all the other teams in their section like Seneca Valley, North Allegheny, Central Catholic and North Hills. It just seems for some reason that Butler has a really time beating Pine-Richland. Ever since Butler basketball star, Ethan Morton, joined the Butler Boys varsity basketball team in 2016, Butler has an overall record of 1-7 against Pine-Richland in both regular season and postseason games.

If you told me that Butler was the second best team in 6A, I would agree with you. I am telling you that Butler is talented enough to win a WPIAL championship, this season, it's just that they got to figure out to beat Pine-Richland. 

Pine-Richland is getting a lot of attention in Pittsburgh because of how well their Boys basketball team is doing. The way that Pine-Richland's head coach, Jeff Ackermann, is still coaching this team to a lot of wins is quite impressive due to his son's illness with Acute Flaccid Myelitis. We all have Ackermann's son, Bryson, in our thoughts and prayers.

Dan Petcash is one of the star players on Pine-Richland's Boys basketball team that has been playing at a high level. This season, Petcash has been averaging 21.6 points per game and has scored 368 points. According to TRIB LIVE HSSN, Petcash scored 503 points in his junior year of basketball and 18 points in his sophomore year of basketball. If you do the math, Petcash has scored a total of 889 points in his high school basketball career and is 111 points away from 1,000. If Pine-Richland can go deep into the postseason, I don't see how Petcash cannot break 1,000 points.

It's not just Petcash that has been helping the Rams win games. Colin Luellen, Patrick Shanahan, Greg Shulkosky and other players on the team have been making an impact on the court whether it's scoring, rebounding, assisting or playing defense. So far, Pine-Richland's record this season is 8-0 in the section and their overall record is 16-2. They started the season 1-2 by beating Highlands and losing to Fox Chapel and Upper St. Clair. After losing two games in a row, Pine-Richland won 15 straight games. Last season, Pine-Richland lost to Penn Hills in the 6A Boys Basketball WPIAL championship game. Dan Petcash and the rest of the Rams team wants that WPIAL championship that they go taken away from them from last year.

It's going to be interesting to see how far the Rams travel in the postseason as the team's practices are probably going to be more intense.