City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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A decade after last playing in the Catholic League, Joe Zeglinski is remembering how hard it is to win games during league play.

Even the ones that look easy don’t stay that way for long.

The first-year Archbishop Ryan head coach watched his team take a 20-point lead into the half against a Bonner-Prendie squad that wasn’t quite ready to play, then saw it all almost crumble away in a third quarter that saw them turn the ball over 11 times.

“In this league, if you relax for a couple of minutes they jump right on you,” Zeglinski said. “Kind of forget how tough it is.”

But the Raiders were able to right the ship, closing out a 68-52 win over the Friars for Zeglinski’s first career Catholic League win as a head coach.

It was far from pretty—Ryan turned it over 28 times total, 14 in each half. But the third quarter was by far the low point; the Raiders coughed it up 11 times, including on each of the first five possessions.

“We talked about it at halftime, that we need to take care of the ball,” Zeglinski said. “They were going to come out with some energy and toughness, that’s what we did and we came out careless with the ball."

That came after a first half in which they couldn’t miss, an opening 16 minutes that saw Ryan (8-3, 1-1 PCL) take a 39-19 lead into the break.

That lead went down to a dozen in the first four minutes of the third quarter, and then a pair of triples by freshman Michael Perretta made it eight points with 2:21 remaining in the period.

Bonner (6-4, 0-2 PCL) got as close as three on a layup by John Hargraves to open the fourth quarter, but they couldn’t get any closer.

“I’m proud of the way our kids fought back, I am,” Bonner coach Jack Concannon said. “And I told them that, but at the same time I told them it’s easy to play when you’re down 20, it’s not easy to play when the game’s 0-0. Hopefully it’s a lesson for us.”

Austin Chabot’s fifth triple of the afternoon made it a six-point game again, and another 3-pointer by the senior wing was part of a 9-0 run that made it 59-45 Ryan with 4:27 to play.

Hargraves briefly gave Bonner some life after that, scoring five points in eight seconds, but that was the Friars’ last grasp at momentum.

Freddie Killian put the exclamation point on the win with a dunk over two Bonner players to follow that spurt, and Chabot added his final 3-pointer to extend the lead back to 14 with 3:15 remaining.

As a team, Ryan shot 24-of-37 from the floor, including a spiffy 9-of-15 mark from the 3-point arc.

Much of that was due to the sharpshooting of Chabot, who dropped 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting, including 7-of-12 from long range in what Zeglinski said was “probably the best he’s shot the ball all year.”

“I’m just staying within the offense,” Chabot said. “Coach tells us not to force anything, today I let it come to me.”

The 6-6 senior wing, who also had six rebounds, was committed to DeSales but opened up his recruitment two weeks back.

“I wanted to play out my senior season, just see what else I could get,” he said. “It wasn’t anything against DeSales or no one pressured me out of it, just a personal decision.”

DeSales is one of three Division III schools still in heavy pursuit, along with Catholic U and Arcadia, whose head coach Justin Scott was in attendance for this one.

Junior guard Izaiah Brockington added 14 for the Raiders to go along with three rebounds and three steals.

Hargraves, who’s committed to Moravian, finished with a game-high 16 points for Bonner-Prendie, who took 19 more shots than Archbishop Ryan (56) but made three fewer (21), shooting 37.5 percent overall and 26.3 percent (5-of-19) from 3-point range.

Four of those 3-pointers came off the hands of Perretta, a 5-8 freshman who finished with a dozen points for the Friars.

“Not only can he shoot the ball, he’s a leader and he understands the game,” Concannon said. “He gets the game, being a coaches’ son, and he’s got a bright future.”