City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Justin McFadden had played in the Palestra before, during his high school years at Lower Merion.

And though any game--whether it’s a Penn/Princeton clash, Catholic League championship or a bunch of old-timers playing pick-up--on the court of the facility that celebrated its 89th birthday on New Years’ Day is a welcome opportunity, McFadden’s previous Palestra experiences had been during offseason team events and individual camps, which isn’t quite the same.

“They had the courts split up so you’re going sideways, it never felt like the Palestra,” he said on Saturday, after his Binghamton squad played Penn. “But tonight it did.”

With the sun filtering through the Palestra’s yellow-gold windows down onto the court, brightening the building even when the lights were shut off, McFadden got to see what playing in the Cathedral of College Basketball really felt like. The Binghamton sophomore returned to his neck of the woods with the rest of his team to take on a Penn program playing the latest in a building that it opened on Jan. 1, 1927 with a win over Yale.

It wasn’t a good result for the Bearcats, an 80-45 loss at the hands of the Quakers that dropped the team’s record to 3-10 on the season.

There’s been a lot of those over the last few years for Binghamton, but the program is keeping an optimistic mindset with a youthful team going through some growing pains--both literal and figurative.

McFadden is one of nine freshmen and sophomores currently in the Binghamton rotation, and this is a team that has no fewer than five players either out with season-ending injuries or dealing with somewhat more minor aches and pains.

“Yeah, I think it’s always great when you have a team full of guys that like each other, and we definitely love each other and we love hanging out together,” McFadden said. “And we’re growing up, we’re growing up together, it’s going to be good in two years when we’re seniors and we can look back and say ‘look how far we’ve come.’”

A rather underrated talent during his years at Lower Merion, one of the state’s perennial powerhouses on the hardwood, McFadden didn’t receive a Division I scholarship offer until the one from Binghamton just before his senior season. The 6-foot-5, 210-pound wing forward followed that up by winning the Central League MVP award in 2013-14, averaging 14.9 ppg and grabbing 246 rebounds.

Thanks to that work ethic and attitude, he’s already been named a team captain as a sophomore.

“We’re really young team that was in search of leadership and he’s very mature for a sophomore,” head coach Tommy Dempsey said. “He’s able to shoulder a lot of leadership role that was missing.”

McFadden still keeps track of his alma mater, who’s off to an 8-2 start this year. The Aces beat a pair of strong District 3 teams in York and J.P. McCaskey, last year’s state runner-up, in Lancaster to close out the year, and McFadden knows what that means for the program under head coach Gregg Downer, who’s been there since the Kobe Bryant era of the mid-90s.

“When Lower Merion has a good Christmas tournament, that usually means good things in March,” he said. “So hopefully that turns out to be true again.”

So far this year, McFadden’s numbers (5.9 ppg, 3.4 rpg) are similar to what he put up as a freshman (6.8 ppg, 3.6 rpg), though it’s safe to assume that Binghamton’s general offensive numbers will improve as America East play begins and they won’t have to play the likes of Michigan State, Oakland and St. Bonaventure on a regular basis.

It doesn’t help that two starting guards, Yosef Yacob and Romello Walker are both on the bench with injuries--Yosef’s shoulder has him out the whole season--and a third guard, J.C. Show, is sitting out a transfer year after playing well his freshman season at Bucknell.

So there is an positive attitude around a Binghamton program still reeling from the 2009 scandal that took a group that had won 23 games in 2008-09--though under what are now clearly dubious circumstances--and tore it apart; after winning 13 games the following season, the Bearcats haven’t won 10 games or more in the five seasons since.

“Our chemistry is terrific, we have a group of guys who come in every day, and they work hard and have a positive attitude,” said Dempsey, who’s 19-86 in now his fourth season at the program. “We don’t have a lot of offensive confidence to say the least right now, we just have to work our way through it and continue to play hard, play with good energy and once we win some ballgame and once we have a couple of good shooting nights, I think everything will loosen up.”

Before heading back to Binghamton, McFadden got one last taste of home; as the Bearcats boarded their bus, cheesesteaks from Tony Luke’s were waiting.

Not his favorite, but close enough.

“If I had a say, it would probably be Larry’s,” he said; no surprise that a kid from Bala Cynwyd would prefer the famous Hawk Hill eatery. “If we play at St. Joe’s, we’ll be at Larry’s no doubt.”