City of Basketball Love

Ari Rosenfeld (@realA_rosenfeld)
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As dozens of players have come and gone from St. Joe’s Prep--from Reggie Redding to Steve Vasturia to Chris Clover--one thing has remained consistent at 17th and Girard for the last 15 years.

The winningest coach in Philadelphia Catholic League history, William “Speedy” Morris has been manning the sidelines for the Prep since resigning as La Salle University’s coach in 2001.

While many pundits have counted out the Hawks prior to both of the last two seasons, Morris’ presence provides all the confidence his players need to outperform expectations again and again.

“I think anytime you have Speedy coaching, good things are going to happen,” senior center Pete Gayhardt said after Prep’s 57-48 win over Bonner-Prendergast. “You’ve just got to execute what he says. We’ve been executing recently, and it shows. Our record shows it.”

That record that Gayhardt referred to would certainly qualify as a surprise to most; today's win moved the Hawks to 12-3 on the season, including an undefeated 4-0 mark in Catholic League play.

Morris’ squad is without reigning league MVP Clover, who’s now a freshman at Saint Joseph’s University, along with three other starters from a team that finished fourth in the PCL last season. Even so, he has his team keeping pace with highly-touted teams like Neumann-Goretti and Archbishop Carroll, the league’s only other undefeated teams.

“We feel like this year we’ve got something to prove a little bit. People were saying, ‘Clover’s gone, they can’t do anything.’ Well, we think we can do something,” Gayhardt said. “We’ve got to keep it going. Our confidence has to stay where it is and I think we can win a lot of games.”

The hot start is thanks in large part to two new members of the rotation: sophomore guards Kyle Thompson and Darius Kinnel.

Thompson (13.5 points per game) was a member of Prep’s JV squad last year, while Kinnel (10.5 ppg) started on a Highland (N.J.) team that made a run in the South Jersey Group 3 tournament. The Hawks’ two leading scorers, they scored 16 points each against Bonner, combining for five 3-pointers and a number of tough finishes around the rim.

Both stepped up in the second half that saw Prep pull away, with Thompson scoring seven points in the third quarter and Kinnel doing the same in the fourth; they shot a combined 7-for-9 from the foul line in the final frame, part of a 15-for-18 effort for the Hawks.

Kinnel stands at 5-foot-10 and does most of the ballhandlng duties while Thompson plays on the wing. He brings a bit of a different element to this Prep team, as Morris hasn’t had particularly dynamic scorers at the point guard spot in several years.

Morris doesn’t tend to take many transfers, but is thrilled with what he’s gotten so far from the South Jersey product.

“He’s our best defender. He plays hard all the time. He’s struggling with his shot but he made a couple big threes today,” Morris said. “He makes his foul shots, and you need a point guard at the end of the game that’s going to do that. We’re very happy to have him, he’s a good player, and he’s getting better and better.”

Back manning the middle is Gayhardt, a 6-foot-6 behemoth who’s ticketed for Notre Dame next year on a lacrosse scholarship. A starter on last year’s team, he posted yet another double with 12 points and 11 rebounds against Bonner.

As a guy who gets most of his points around the rim, Gayhardt relies on his guards for a bulk of his production. Although he’s used to playing with more experienced guys, having been surrounded by four senior guards last season, count him as part of the group that’s been highly impressed with the Hawks’ fresh faces.

“You’ve got to give credit to those guards. Those Bonner guards are good and those sophomores hung in there and did a good job on them,” he said. “They’re doing a heck of a job so far, so I’m excited for what’s going to happen in the future.”

If Prep is going to continue to build on its strong start of the season as it moves into the heart of Catholic League play, it’s going to be on the backs of Thompson, Kinnel, and Gayhardt.

Regardless of what outsiders said prior to the season, those around the program were quietly confident they could reach this point. As a result, the Hawks are taking each win in stride, not allowing an undefeated mark this early in the season to go to their heads.

“Every game you play, you think you can win,” Morris said. “We play them one at a time. We play McDevitt next and hopefully we beat McDevitt. We just play them one at a time and you can’t worry about who’s in first.”