City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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With just over four minutes remaining in the latest installment of the Holy Family-Philadelphia University rivalry and his team up a single point, Holy Family’s Reggie Charles found Eric Fleming wide open on the left wing.

Fleming’s catch-and-release triple was pure, and though the four-point lead far from guaranteed a win, there’s no doubt that Holy Family’s chances got a lot better when it went through.

“It was a little bit of a turning point,” Fleming said. “I’m sure they thought they were going to run and that stopped the run, so that kind of changed the game.”

Holy Family’s fifth-year coach R.C. Kehoe was a little less understated about the shot, which he said he knew was good “when (Fleming) caught it.”

“It was the biggest shot in his career,” Kehoe said. “Point-blank.”

Thanks to Fleming’s timely shooting and Reggie Charles’ 30-point outing, Holy Family won its second game in a row against a ranked opponent, downing archrival Philly U, ranked No. 25 in the country, 61-54 on Thursday night.

Through the first five games of the season, Fleming was just 5-of-29 (17.2 percent) from 3-point range, but in the five games since he’s 14-of-37 (37.8 percent). That’s exactly what Kehoe wants out of the 2011 Archbishop Ryan grad, who played a point/combo guard in Bernie Rogers' system at Ryan but has become a sniper from the wing in Holy Family's uptempo system.

“I said to him ‘we’re going to make this simple. if you pass up a 3 you’re coming out of the game,’” Kehoe said. “And he hasn’t done it.”

While Fleming hit big shots, Philly U (8-2, 3-2 CACC) couldn’t hit anything all game long. The Rams, despite getting a good number of looks around the rim, were 36.4 percent (20-of-55) overall for the game and just 3-of-16 (18.8 percent) from beyond the arc.

Junior Brendan Kilpatrick and senior T.J. Huggins, two of Philly U’s five starters--who are all expected to play 40 minutes each game, and oftentimes do--combined to shoot 4-of-28 from the floor.

“We shot it poorly, and usually when you do that, you can win some games, but we can’t beat a good team if we shoot as poorly as we did,” said Philly U’s Hall of Fame coach, Herb Magee, who knows a thing or two about shooting the basketball. “We had two guys combine to go 4-for-28, and once that happens it’s a done deal.”

“For us to stay in the game, credit to the way we defended, the way we prepared, I think we did a good job that way, and I think if we made some shots it would have been even closer than it was,” Magee continued.

After Fleming's big shot, Charles did his part to help seal the win for Holy Family (8-2, 4-0 CACC), hitting all six of his foul shots over the final three minutes. For the game, the Father Judge product was 8-of-15 overall and 13-of-15 from the foul stripe, impressive numbers on a night where the Tigers as a team were just 18-of-55 (32.7 percent) overall.

Philly U was paced by senior center Peter Alexis with 19 points and nine rebounds, while sophomore Eric Long added eight points and 17 rebounds as the Rams held a 47-29 advantage on the glass.

Kehoe wasn't bothered by that differential in the slightest.

"We have this stat--19 times, we’ve given up 20 offensive rebounds or more...we’re 18-1," he said. "They shot 36 percent. We’ve led the nation or been in the top 10 in the nation in field goal percentage defense three straight years...the rebounding, it is what it is, we’re not going to change that. Some days we’ll get to everything and some days the ball won’t bounce our way.”

Holy Family’s win came just four days after D-II No. 2 Southern Connecticut State came into the Frankford Avenue school’s gym and walked away defeated, but there’s no doubt which one the program and its coaching staff are more excited about.

“It’s Saint Joe’s-Villanova, it’s Duke-North Carolina, this is what it is to us,” Kehoe said. “I don’t like Herb Magee, Herb Magee doesn’t like me...I think he has a respect for me and I have a respect for him and all he’s accomplished, but ultimately they’re the bar in this league.”

“Coach really emphasizes on city games,” Fleming added. “Those are the most important because we take pride in city games; that’s the biggest thing for us, not really outside competition.”

With road losses only to Northeast-10 schools Merrimack and Southern New Hampshire and now wins over two top-25 programs, the Tigers are making their case to appear in the next national rankings. If they do, it would only be the second season where the program has appeared in the national rankings and first under Kehoe; they made an appearance in the top 10 in 2005-06 but it was a short-lived stay.

“It would be big, but it’s nothing we really care about," Fleming said. "It’s just getting wins, getting to the next game, winning every day, that’s what’s important to us. It would be cool, but it’s not what we strive for."

Philly U-Holy Family is a game that’s only become a rivalry since Kehoe took over prior to the 2011 season. Before that, Philly U was 21-0 all-time against Holy Family, which joined the CACC in 1999 and moved along with the rest of the conference from NAIA to NCAA status in 2003.

Thursday night was the 10th matchup between the program since that happened, and the Holy Family win evened the score at 5-5. They’ll play each other again Feb. 20 in the penultimate game of the regular season, with the programs looking like they’re on a crash course to meet in the CACC finals March 5--potentially with an NCAA Tournament berth on the line.

“I just thought that it came down to this: that was a Philadelphia game,” Kehoe said. “Herb Magee is Philadelphia basketball. And what he’s done at that school is phenomenal. But we had a Philly guard [Charles] and he was clearly the best player on the floor, and we had Philly guys around him.”