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Beatty leads St. Benedict's past former Carroll teammates

12/30/2015, 10:45pm EST
By Josh Verlin

David Beatty (above) and St. Benedict's took down his former team, Archbishop Carroll, 50-49 on Wednesday. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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CHESTER, Pa. -- It took only about 30 seconds into Archbishop Carroll’s game against St. Benedict’s for emotions to take over.

That was when former Carroll guard and current St. Ben’s junior David Beatty blocked Carroll senior John Rigsby’s shot, and immediately the two started jawing at each other. Quickly, the referees jumped in to make sure nothing escalated, and warned both teams that they wouldn’t tolerate much more than a few words back-and-forth.

This wasn't the case of a friend coming back to play against his former teammates. Beatty mostly severed ties when he left the Radnor school, saying he only talks to one or two kids he played with before: "Everybody else," he said, "just hates me."

Carroll coach Paul Romanczuk was well aware of what this game meant to his players, and had tried everything he could to make sure that cooler heads prevailed on the court. For the most part, it worked.

"I think we talked a few different times just about this game not be personal," he said. "This is business, this isn’t personal, this is Archbishop Carroll vs. St. Benedict’s."

Ultimately, Beatty and St. Benedict’s got the last statement, leaving Widener University with a 50-49 win.

That outcome wasn’t assured until the final shot had gone up, after a crazy sequence of events saw Carroll seemingly give away the game multiple times only to earn a few extra chances. The last one, after senior guard Josh Sharkey was off on a 3-point attempt with under five seconds left, came via an offensive foul on Beatty on the inbounds that gave his former team the ball back with time to get a good look.

But senior Ryan Daly’s baseline floater couldn’t drop, as Carroll (9-1) took its first loss of the year while St. Benedict’s (11-0) avoided the same fate.

“We shot ourselves in the foot so much but continued to battle and had a lot of great opportunities,” Romanczuk said. “Obviously I would like us to not shoot ourselves in the foot as much and take advantage of maybe one or two of those opportunities. It’s one of those games where if one thing goes differently we end up winning the game.”

It was a game that Benedict’s was only playing because of Beatty, after coming off two games the two days prior against national prep powerhouses Westtown School (Pa.) and La Lumiere (Ind.). Head coach Mark Taylor was given the opportunity in the offseason, and it was a game that one of his new charges couldn’t turn down.

“I knew it was just going to bring a lot of people out and it was going to be a fun, intense game and it was good for both teams,” Beatty said.

Though Beatty finished with 12 points for the Grey Bees, including a crucial 3-point play with under two minutes to play, he certainly wasn’t as dangerous as he could have been, missing more shots than he made over the course of the game.

“It was emotional, because they were just trying to get in my head, and I let them a little bit,” he admitted.

Early on it looked like St. Benedict’s would have no trouble picking up three wins in three days, as the Grey Bees jumped out to a 17-7 lead on the Patriots after one quarter.

Slowly but surely, Carroll got themselves back into the discussion, utilizing a 12-2 run late in the second quarter to tie things up at 29 going into the half. The Patriots led much of the third quarter and even into the fourth, though never by more than a few points against a Grey Bees squad loaded with high-major talent--Beatty included.

Though he already had quite a few scholarship offers before leaving Carroll, the 6-foot-3, 195-pound off guard has added those from the likes of Memphis, Seton Hall and others since arriving at the school’s Newark campus. He said his most frequent callers include “Arizona State, UCLA, Maryland, La Salle, Villanova and Georgetown.”

Credit that to a work ethic that keeps him in the gym for hours and a school that’s bred a number of current NBA players, including most recently former Syracuse guard Tyler Ennis.

“We work out at least four, five hours per day,” Beatty said. “We do extraordinary stuff, we’re in the pool, we run on the track, we’re outside in the morning, 5 AM. It’s a lot and it’s helped me with my recruiting and it’s helped me become a better player and person.”

Archbishop Carroll was led by Sharkey, as the Samford-bound point guard continued a terrific season with a 13-point, eight-rebound, seven-assist effort.

Romanczuk wasn’t settling for moral victories in playing St. Benedict’s as closely as his team did, though he was fairly upbeat afterwards about showing some fight without letting the emotions spill over, and not giving up even with several turnovers in the final minute of play.

“It’s nice to have this type of game going into our league, because going into our league we’re going to have a number of those types of games where it comes down to the end, it’s one play here, one play there,” he said. “So to have that is invaluable.”


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