ORWIGSBURG - During the course of a season it's no easy to task to defeat a talented team that's a division rival twice. Defeating that team three times is even more unlikely, and well four times, you can almost forget about it.

Mahanoy Area showed the unlikely is possible, however, as it edged rival Marian for the fourth time in as many tries, posting a 60-57 overtime victory in the District 11 Class AA semifinal on Wednesday.It wasn't only the Bears fourth win against the Colts this season, but it was also the fourth time the game between the two teams was decided by a single digit deficit.Early on, it looked like Mahanoy (19-5) was going to run away with the game as they quickly got out to a 10-2 lead. Bears forward Brian Miller was a big reason why, as he scored 12 points in the frame, including two triples.However, as the Colts (11-12) battled through their last four games of the season to get into the district playoffs, they once again battled to get into the ball game.Marian went on a run of its own and actually took a 13-12 lead late in the quarter. A couple buckets by Miller gave the Bears a three-point advantage after one, but it was obvious that Marian wasn't going to go quietly into the night."Finishing the first quarter strong was big for us," said Marian coach John Patton. "I think that set the tone for us for the rest of the game and once again we just battled."We've been getting much better over the last half of the season and a key component to that was how much tougher and more resilient our kids have become during this stretch."Mahanoy stretched its lead to 32-25 at halftime, but the Colts rallied again.The third and fourth quarters between these two rivals could've almost been likened to a prize fight where the underdog (Marian) punched its way back into the bout and then the two just kept throwing haymakers until they both ended up on the mat.The Colts put the Bears on their haunches a bit in the third as they switched to a more spread offense, which worked wonders. It spread out the aggressive half court of the Mahanoy defense and the Colts were able to get to the basket more in the third. The result was just a two-point disadvantage for Marian heading into the fourth quarter."Our offense got much better in the second half," said Patton. "We moved a lot better and we spread them out a little bit. You can't go to that offense if you're down big, so as soon as we closed the gap some we were able to make the switch and it went well for us."In the fourth it looked like Marian was going to pull out the upset, but Mahanoy wouldn't give in. The Colts took the lead four different times and there were seven lead changes in the stanza with the most important action happening in the last 1:20.With the game knotted up at 50-50, Matt Yedsena up to that point made the play of the game stealing the ball from the Colts Ethan Kuczynski, taking it coast to coast for the go ahead score. Then Marian would respond with a Kuczynski lay in to tie things up once again. Mahanoy had a chance to win the game when Miller got a wide open jump shot at the buzzer, but he wasn't able to connect, sending the game into overtime."Our kids didn't get frazzled throughout any of Marian's runs tonight and that's great to see," said Mahanoy coach Scott Hudson. "I've known these kids for a long time, they're tough kids and they're kids that will never give up. Anytime we were down tonight, no heads went down; they just looked at me and wanted to know what we were going to run next. I'm very proud of them tonight."In overtime Mahanoy took an early 54-52 lead and then nobody scored again until there was about one minute left in the period when two Nick Wesner free throws tied the game.Then it was an end of the game frenzy that all basketball aficionados hope for. Back-to-back three-pointers by Mahanoy's Marcus Styka and Marian's Brandon Mohammed kept the game even, but after Mohammed's three the Colts defense lost Miller, who buried the eventual game-winning triple. The Colts had two shots in the final seconds, but they couldn't convert.MARIANKarnish 1-0-0-3, Vercusky 0-0-0-0, Puza 1-0-0-2, Paisley 0-0-0-0, Kuczynski 6-3-6-15, DeAngelo 4-1-2-9, Mohammad 5-0-0-13, Wesner 4-4-4-13, Weber 1-0-0-2. TOTALS: 22 8-12 57.MAHANOY AREAMiller 11-0-2-26, Luddy 1-0-0-2, Wronski 0-1-2-1, Yedsena 6-3-5-16, Styka 2-2-3-8, Joseph 3-1-2-7, McGee 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 23 7-14 60.Marian 14 11 16 11 5 - 57Mahanoy 17 15 7 13 8 - 60Three-pointers: Marian - Mohammad 3, Karnish 1, Wesner 1; Mahanoy Area - Miller 4, Styka 2, Yedsena 1.