City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Archbishop Carroll basketball has become a family affair on a daily basis.

That is, a Daly basis.

Senior guard Ryan Daly, a Hartford signee, is in his second year as a starter for Paul Romanczuk’s Patriots and third year as a contributor, while younger brother Colin, a junior has moved into the starting lineup full-time this year.

And now, for the first time, the two Daly brothers are joined by their father, Brian Daly, an assistant coach for the varsity squad.

In Archbishop Carroll’s season-opening game against Academy New Church on Saturday evening at Widener University, the capstone game of the Scholastic Play-by-Play Classic Tip-Off event, the Dalys certainly made their mark: Ryan had 16 points, including seven in the fourth quarter, Colin added 13 and Brian helped keep the rest of the lineup motivated during a 66-56 win.

It’s the first time that the three have been all involved with the same basketball team, and will likely be the only year it happens for the three.

“These are the memories that I was never able to see, both of my kids playing varsity at a high level, that’s really enjoyable and they’re the memories that I wanted,” Brian said. “Paul’s very kind in letting me hang around...it’s been a great experience.”

In May, Brian decided to leave his position as an assistant coach at Penn State to be able to spend the season with his family--which also includes his wife, Tracie, and their daughter, Keri, now a freshman at Carroll.

The last time the family was all together in the Philadelphia area was 2008, when Daly was hired from his job as head coach at Monsignor Bonner to join Pat Chambers’ staff at Boston University; he then moved with Chambers and the rest of the staff to Penn State in 2011 when Chambers got the Nittany Lions’ gig.

At that point, the rest of his family joined him in State College, though two years later--following Ryan’s freshman year of high school--the boys approached their father about playing basketball in the league they’d dreamed of playing in since they were young: the Catholic League.

So Tracie, Keri, Ryan and Colin moved back to the Philadelphia suburbs, while their dad stayed at Penn State and got down to the region as often as he could--not an easy task during basketball season, especially at a high-major program trying to develop a winning reputation.

But eventually, that distance got to Brian, and now he’s back in the area where he first gained recognition as a star at Bonner and then St. Joe’s before coaching at his high school alma mater and then the college ranks.

His family certainly isn’t complaining.

“It’s great, usually we’d have to stay home some nights because we didn’t have rides. He’s good for rides,” Colin joked, then got serious: “We’re all together as a family...we have family dinners again.”

Of course, after moving home it didn’t take long for Brian to miss basketball, and by October he’d officially joined Romanczuk’s staff as an assistant coach for the 2015-16 season.

At first, there were some slight difficulties with that.

“We were doing a passing drill and we had to call out each other’s names and I was like ‘Dad,’’ Ryan recalled, “and everybody was like ‘no, that’s Coach.’ I got used to it.”

For Brian, it’s an easy transition from father to basketball coach; when he steps onto the court, in the gym, his sons become just two more players on the team who he's hoping to help coach to their first state title since 2009.

“I’m probably a little bit harder on them than anybody else, but they’ve been great with it,” he said. “They’ve been mature about it, which I was concerned about because obviously, you know, I’m their dad but I’ve also been coaching a long time, so I have to treat them like everybody else.”

The Daly's first official game together went fairly well: after trailing by two at halftime, Carroll surged ahead with a 12-2 run to end the third quarter with a 46-35 lead. The Patriots would eventually lead by as many as 15 in the final quarter against a fairly young Academy New Church squad that started three sophomores and two juniors.

Carroll senior point guard Josh Sharkey, a Samford signee, earned MVP honors in the game for his 17-point, nine-rebound, seven-assist, five-steal performance, while senior wing John Rigsby added 10 points.

“I thought we had the first-game jitters...but as the game went on, we developed more composure," Ryan said. "Me and my brother got off to a rocky start shooting the ball, but the second half when we penetrated the zone we got open shots and I hit a couple, he hit a couple 3s.”

You can bet it's a game that will be discussed plenty over the next few days--at Carroll, and certainly at the Daly household.

“The fact that we’re all going home together, you can put a price on that,” Brian said. “College is great and hopefully I’ll be back in the college game sooner rather than later, but family’s what’s important, and I haven’t regretted it for one second.”