Philly Basketball 24 • 7 • 365

City of Basketball Love

Current Section

Home

Christian Kelly, Lezanic brothers impress at WCU

06/09/2015, 11:30pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

Stopped by West Chester University on Tuesday night to check out a few sets of WCU’s high school summer league.

Here’s are two stories on two area programs coming off successful years, but both have some big parts to replace:

~~~

Phoenixville’s Kelly does it all
There aren’t going to be too many teams in the Delaware Valley this year who will lean on one player as much as Phoenixville will rely on Christian Kelly.

The 6-foot-4, 185-pound rising senior wing showed why it’ll be tough for head coach Eric Burnett to take him off the court for any significant amount of time this season, creating with plays all over the court for the Phantoms in two wins on Tuesday night.

He's coming off a junior year where he averaged 22 points per game, and could build on that in his last year of high school.

Though he’s still waiting on his first scholarship offer at either the Division I or II level, Kelly said he’d been hearing from several local schools at both levels.

“I’ve been working on my guard skills because I’ve been getting face-guarded this season, so I’ve been working on my ball-handling,” he said. “I can score from anywhere: post, 3-point, mid-range, off the dribble, transition, and I can give good passes to my teammates.”

He is indeed a talented scorer who can get buckets from all over the court, and he wasn’t lying about the passing ability, either--he made several nice passes out of double-teams and understood when to give up a tough shot to find an open teammate.

And in addition to all the work he does on the offensive end, Kelly is also at the top of Pheonixville’s 1-2-2 press, where he uses his length to disrupt passing lanes and cause turnovers.

“From day one, he’s always been asking how he’s going to get better and how he’s going to help the team win,” said Phoenixville head coach Eric Burnett, who’s entering his second year leading the program. “That’s what I like most about Christian, he’s extremely coachable.

“Obviously with his talent, he’s an extraordinary player, both offensively and defensively, he uses his length very well at the top of the press, and also strategically uses his length inside with finishing. He’s not an overly powerful player, but he’s finesse in a way that he can finish around taller players because of his length.”

That’s not to say that Burnett doesn’t have other quality players on the roster--he does, and not just one or two with varsity experience, either. Rising senior point guard Marquis McDuffee is a returning starter, and 6-5 junior forward Avery Close, another contributor a year ago, has nice length and can stretch the floor as well with his shooting ability though he’ll be counted on to provide an interior presence due to his height.

Close is one of a number of rising juniors on the Phantoms’ roster who Burnett will throw out there, including a pair of left-handed guards in Shyheim Abernathy and Nazir Green.

He’ll need all of them to help step up to replace two graduating starters, shooting guard Mike Anthony--headed to La Salle to play baseball--and wing DeAndre Gadsden, who will be going to Valley Forge Military College to continue his academic and basketball career. They’re departing a team that went 19-8 overall, with a 9-3 record in the Pioneer Athletic Conference (PAC-10), falling just short of a PIAA Class AAAA state playoff berth.

“They were both four-year varsity players that were in the program for a long time, so just their knowledge of the game is definitely huge and their experience in big games was big,” Burnett said. “But I’m confident that we have some juniors that are coming up that are going to be able to take over that leadership role.”

~~~

Lezanic brothers lead sharpshooting Conestoga
It’s going to take quite a while to see just how this year’s Conestoga squad measures up to the one that won 23 games this past year, including 17 in a row at one point.

One area in which they won’t have any issue keeping up, it seems, is perimeter shooting.

The Pioneers were on fire from beyond the arc on Tuesday night, led by senior guard M.J. Lezanic, who buried no fewer than four 3-pointers in a win over Concord (Del.), but he wasn’t the only one capable of getting hot.

Another rising senior, shooting guard Andrew Larkin, had a few treys of his own, as did rising seniors Peyton Jones and Charlie Martin. And many of those shots were wide open looks coming off an extra pass, a credit to a Conestoga program that’s well-coached from top to bottom.

“I feel that the team this year will be relying a lot more on the 3-ball, and we have a plethora of shooters this year to rely on,” said Lezanic, who also hit a few nice runners to show he’s more than just a pure gunner.

The Pioneers will have to replace quite a bit in the frontcourt with the graduations of 6-foot-5 Dan Vila and Jack Lambert, plus 6-4 Martin Dorsey and Andrew Diehl, so expect more of an up-and-down, guard-oriented offense this season under head coach Mike Troy.

“We can have four guards out there at a time, and they can all shoot it,” said assistant coach Brian Casey, coaching the team on Tuesday night while Troy had family obligations. “We’re going to run with that for a while and do some things based on that, figure out our best defense and play as hard as we can.”

Also impressing was an incoming freshman guard--Lenzanic’s younger brother, Zach Lezanic, who looks like he’s capable of earning some real varsity minutes right away with his court savvy, handling and shooting abilities on a 5-11 frame.

“It's awesome because I got to watch this guy grow up right by my side,” M.J. said of his younger brother. “I've seen the things this kid can do, and (for him) to finally do it along with me is really neat.”

The Lezanic brothers aren’t the only family connections on the Pioneers this year, though they are the only set of brothers. Another familiar name on the roster is that of Lucas Yonda, whose brother Zack was one of the top players in the Central League as a senior in 2013-14 and just played his freshman year at Swarthmore.

This offseason is all about chemistry for Conestoga, and getting some rather unproven players as much experience and confidence as possible before November comes.

If those shots keep falling, they should be all right.

“I think as long as we move the ball, and we’re in an unselfish team, we like to run, it should be good for us this year,” Casey said. “We’ve got to rebound, though, and defense has to step up. But if we do those things, we should have a lot of fun this year.”