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Showdown in Havertown: Night 1 Notebook

05/29/2015, 1:30am EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The 19th annual Showdown in Havertown tipped off on Thursday night at Haverford High School, Haverford Middle School and Manoa Elementary, with eight of the 24 teams involved playing a pair of games each across the three courts.

Here’s a quick notebook from the action at Haverford High School; we’ll have much more coverage of the entire event throughout the weekend:

Betley happy with current D-I options
Downingtown West’s Ryan Betley now has a pair of college options, as he entered the April live periods with one offer, from Lafayette, and picked up another one from Penn right at the end of the month.

The 6-foot-5, 185-pound shooting guard, coming off a strong junior year, continued that with a solid two weekends in April with his AAU team, Team Philly, on the Adidas Gauntlet series, averaging 12.1 ppg and 3.9 rpg while playing right around 20 mpg.

“The Adidas Gauntlet was definitely a higher competition than our team was used to, and it was good for us,” he said. “I played well in the Adidas Gauntlet, shot the ball well, so that’s a good thing.”

Betley did indeed shoot the ball well, making 46.2 percent (34-of-73) overall and 47.4 percent (24-of-50) from beyond the arc through Team Philly’s eight games in both Dallas and Indianapolis.

In addition to his two offers, Betley is also hearing from several other Ivy and Patriot League programs, namely Holy Cross, Brown and Lehigh. But if those other schools don’t end up extending offers, it’s clear he’s already very happy with the two options in front of him, calling them “two great schools that I like a lot.”

The first to offer was Lafayette, with head coach Fran O’Hanlon extending a scholarship back in January. The Leopards already have one commitment for 2016, Parkland (Pa.) wing Kyle Stout, but the defending Patriot League champions still have three slots open for the class--and O'Hanlon's system needs no shortage of shooters.

“It’s a great school, a little bit smaller but I like Fran O’Hanlon a lot,” Betley said. “He’s a great coach and they have a great program, they won the Patriot League, so they know what they’re doing up there.”

Penn “offered”--Ivy League schools can’t give athletic scholarships, so an offer is really just the offer of a spot on the roster--at the end of April. New head coach Steve Donahue, who got the job in mid-March, made Betley a priority early on and it looks like the Quakers are similarly very involved.

“(Donahue) told me I was the first recruit he actually called when he got the new job,” Betley said. “He’s been on me since day one and the whole staff has been contacting me, I like the staff a lot and obviously Penn’s a great school.”

Betley said he's likely to take official visits to both schools but hasn't set visits yet; he also said that it was almost certain his decision would be coming before his senior year, but wasn't ready to make any definite timeline as of yet.

He does know what he'll be focusing on the rest of the summer.

“Everyone knows I’m a great shooter, so I’ve got to work on things to counter that--pump fake, dribble drive and stuff like that,” he said. “Also (improve) my defensive game, hitting the weight room and improving my foot speed.”

Souderton’s offseason gets underway at Haverford High
Souderton coach Pete Chimera is modifying the way his team plays defense, so despite a solid amount of returning talent, he knows that it’s going to be an offseason of ups and downs on that end of the floor.

And perhaps not surprisingly, the debut of that defensive twist didn’t go as well as he would like it to once the 2015-16 season comes around.

“We’re still running a pack-line but we’re forcing you to the baseline, that’s a little different, kids aren’t used to it, and I’m not sure we’re quick enough for it,” he said after his Indians lost to Chichester in their opener. “We got beat the baseline a lot.”

Souderton’s coming off a 13-10 (9-5 Suburban One Continental) season that ended with a loss to Phoenixville in the first round of the District 1 AAAA playoffs. They Indians are losing their best all-around player in 6-foot-5 forward Evan Slone, who will be continuing his hoops and academic career at Arcadia University in the fall; Slone is one of four varsity seniors that are graduating.

Senior forwards Tracy Simsick and Austin Eberhart are both returning starters, and the 6-6 Eberhart and 6-4 Simsick don’t lack in the height department; the two will be counted on to help replace different things that Slone brought to the table.

"I think Austin Eberhart gives us a big, physical presence, more maybe than even Evan, but skill-wise he’s not there yet, but he’ll get better,” Chimera said. “I think Tracy will have to pick up the scoring, and I think then we’ve got a lot of other parts to fill in.”

Simsick and Eberhart aren't the only size that Chimera has to work with on his roster. Khalif Blackwood, a rising junior, is 6-4 and athletic, and his classmate Antonio Rodriguez is around 6-3 and hits the glass.

"Obviously Tracy can score," Chimera said. "His mid-range game, he gets up so high on his jumper, it’s hard to stop. I think that’s definitely a strength, and our inside presence, we have a lot of bodies that can play. They’re young; we’ve got Austin, we’ve got Khalif, we’ve got Antonio."

Outside, senior guards Ian Beardsley and Ty Salone give the Indians a solid pair of ball-handlers, and rising junior Mike Bealer is a solid outside shooter. If the defense continues to gel, Chimera's got the size and now athleticism on the roster to be a force in the SOL Continental.

“Our league is going to be the way it is every year," he said. "Everybody’s good, nobody’s fantastic, but everybody’s good and it’s going to be very, very competitive.”