City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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After an agonizingly long fourth quarter ended with Church Farm holding on to a tough road victory at Holy Ghost Prep, CFS head coach Marc Turner seemed more relieved than excited.

That’s what happens when your team shoots 11-of-27 from the foul line, when they have to withstand a 35-minute final period that saw Holy Ghost close what had been a 14-point gap to as little as two before surviving, 42-34.

Still, they’ll take any win they can get against their Bicentennial Athletic League rival, who’s won 19 league championships over the last 28 years--especially on the road.

“We came out of here with a ‘W,’ so that’s all that matters, I guess,” Turner said. “Hard-fought win, I thought our kids held our composure for 32 minutes. For us, it’s a matter of if we just take care of the ball, we’re going to be tough to beat.”

A big reason for that is the presence of sophomore center Fred Odhiambo, a Kenyan native who’s drawing all sorts of attention.

The 6-foot-10 youngster, who turned 16 two weeks ago, found his way to the Exton boarding school with the help of his aunt, who was living in Philadelphia at the time.

Though he’s a clear Division I prospect, Odhiambo is still wide-eyed when it comes to his recruitment, which neither he nor Turner are too concerned with at this point--he didn’t even play AAU basketball last summer, and is only considering doing so next year.

Already, coaches from Virginia, Villanova, Temple, Saint Joseph’s, La Salle and more have been to Church Farm for practices, and as he continues to get stronger and grow into to his lanky frame, the sky is indeed the limit.

“I’m just shocked, the first year, last year, I was already getting some emails from schools, so it was ‘wow, I don’t know what to say,’ I’m just excited,” he said. “All I can say, I just give thanks to God, he’s the one who brought me over here.”

Going up against a Holy Ghost roster that doesn’t play anybody taller than 6-4 senior Jack Coolahan, Odhiambo took advantage at every opportunity. He finished with 13 points, 13 rebounds and eight blocks, as well as a few nifty assists--including one to junior point guard James Lawton for a layup with three seconds remaining to finish off the game.

It didn’t help that Holy Ghost’s outside shots were for the most part not hitting their mark, forcing the Firebirds to get creative offensively.

“Against other teams, maybe we’d be able to develop an inside game against them, but we don’t have any size,” Holy Ghost head coach Tony Chapman said. “If we’re not making some outside shots and we fall behind that much early, it’s very difficult to win.”

What Chapman’s referring to is a 16-0 run by Church Farm (5-1, 2-0 BAL) that began three minutes into the game and lasted nearly four minutes into the second quarter, giving the Griffins a 17-3 lead.

Holy Ghost Prep was coming off a 76-71 overtime win at Lower Moreland on Tuesday, a game played with about twice the scoring as Chapman and the Firebirds would prefer, and it seemed like they hadn’t quite gotten their legs back from that big win.

“I think our kids were tired, we didn’t respond emotionally early, we were just flat,” Chapman said. “It’s not an excuse, but that’s not us. If we were ready and we were at the top of our game and we were rested, we still might not have won this game, but i thought that was part of the reason early on.

The second timeout he called during the stretch finally seemed to kick in, as the Firebirds began the long process of climbing back; It was a 21-12 deficit at halftime and 29-23 after the third quarter.

Coolahan, who finished with 23 of his team’s 34 points, scored the first two buckets of the fourth quarter to bring Prep back within two, but they could get no closer.

The Church Farm defense clamped down at that point, holding Holy Ghost (6-1, 2-1 BAL) to just one field goal and seven points over the final 4:32 while getting to the line 15 times of their own during that span; though they made just seven of those attempts, it was enough to hold on.

Junior guard Augustus Veniukevicius, a Lithuania native, shoot off missing four of his first six foul attempts of the game to make four big ones with a minute remaining; he finished with 11 points as the only other Griffin in double figures.

“He’s a gamer, he’s a fourth-quarter player,” Turner said. “We’ve had a couple of close games, the last three games actually, and it’s been Augustus in the fourth quarter who took over. Anything he does in the fourth quarter doesn’t surprise me at all.”