City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Malvern Prep coach John Harmatuk’s plan was to focus entirely on Friends’ Central’s best three players and almost ignore the others on the court.

It seemed like a sound strategy, after DeAndre Hunter, Jon Lawton and Chuck Champion scored all but four of FCS’ points in a December matchup between the two Pennsylvania Independent School state tournament first-round opponents.

FCS sophomore Antone Walker, who’s not part of that triumvirate, only scored two points that first time around. But he took it personally when the Friars’ defenders kept leaving him wide open on the perimeter to open up the rematch.

So he knocked down a 3-pointer, then another, and another. Five in all, all in the first half.

“I know I’m a good shooter,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t show it, but this game I think I showed it.”

Walker’s 3-pointers forced Harmatuk to switch to a man defense, opening up the Malvern interior and allowing Friends’ Central to take control in a 76-58 win.

Because FCS has leaned heavily on the trio of Hunter, Lawton and Champion all season long, Phoenix coach Ryan Tozer had an indication that the Friars were going to try something different to slow down his stars–and he knew who he’d have to turn to in that situation.

“We were watching some film, and we watched the Haverford game and we saw that they played a triangle-and-two and face-guarded three of their players and sat two guys in the lane,” he said. “We talked in practice that if they were going to do that to us, that Antone was going to be wide open, and just have your feet set and shoot with confidence.”

Each of Walker’s five triples brought a bigger and bigger reaction from the Friends’ Central bench. The first one tied the game at 7-7, while the second made it 10-9, giving FCS a lead it wouldn’t relinquish. The third, with a minute left in the opening quarter, pushed the lead to 18-11.

His fourth and fifth, which came back-to-back in the first three minutes of the second quarter, made it a 31-15 ballgame. Harmatuk had his team playing man-to-man by that point, but it didn’t make any difference.

“That’s my fault. We’ve done those junk defenses all year long, and they’ve worked really well for us,” he said. “He made five 3s in the first half and it got us in a hole, but I thought the biggest deal was, we just had no energy…bad strategy, no energy, I guess it just wasn’t our night.”

One more mid-range jumper, just after the half, finished off Walker’s career-high 17 points.

Walker, who’s a lifetime student of Friends’ Central, has been attending and watching Pheonix basketball teams since his pre-kindergarten year at the City Avenue institution. Getting a chance to make such a big impact in a playoff game is something he’s wanted for quite some time.

“I always wanted to play for Friends’ Central,” he said. “Growing up, I’d seen them win four straight state championships and two straight Friends Leagues and I’d been to every one of their home games.”

After Walker got his team out to a big lead, the usual suspects took over for Friends’ Central. Hunter, a 6-7 junior wing with multiple high-major offers, scored 16 of his game-high 28 points in the second half, including five straight near the end of the third quarter to make it a 56-40 game going into the fourth.

Lawton, a senior guard who’s getting looks from low-level Division I and high-level Division II schools, added 22 points for the Phoenix, while junior guard Chuck Champion also finished in double-figures with 10.

Malvern Prep was paced by senior guard Joey Fitzpatrick, who had 20 points, while fellow senior Jack Doherty added 18 and junior point guard Will Powers chipped in 11.

The win sets up a likely matchup with the tournament’s No. 2 seed, Westtown, assuming the Moose advance over an overmatched Springside-Chestnut Hill Academy in a game likely to be played on Monday.

Westtown is also in action on Friday night–in the Friends’ Schools League title game, against Germantown Friends. It’s a game that Tozer and the Phoenix wish they could be playing, but instead they were upended by GFS in the semifinals.

So they’ll have to worry about getting some revenge for a loss to Westtown two weeks back, in a game where the Moose jumped out to a 20-4 lead after one quarter and cruised to a 66-46 win. It’s an eight minutes of basketball that Tozer has made his team watch over and over.

“They’ve seen it, we’ve broken it down,” he said. “We were tight, left a lot of shots short, we were real tentative but we’ve had some real good practices and I think we’ll be ready to play.”