City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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For 16 minutes, Archbishop Carroll was able to play at the same dizzying pace as Neumann-Goretti, countering each big bucket with one of its own.

But in the second half, the Saints did what they’ve been able to do against every Catholic League opponent this season: Bury them.

With a balanced and relentless attack, Neumann-Goretti zoomed away from Carroll for a 98-75 win in front of a packed house at the Saints’ south Philadelphia gymnasium. The Saints, who beat Roman Catholic on the same floor earlier this month, again proved that they currently belong at the top of the Philadelphia Catholic League, and they are now the only unbeaten squad in the conference.

Neumann-Goretti, which entered the games as the topped ranked team in the state with Carroll at No. 2, outscored the visitors 51-31 in the second half after leading 47-44 at the break. The Saints are now 8-0 in the PCL and 15-2 overall.

“They came to play, they pushed it down our throat the whole first half,” Neumann-Goretti coach Carl Arrigale said. “I was just hoping we could sustain it and maybe they would get a little tired because they’re not used to playing that pace. We knew they were a good team coming in here. We tried to calm down a little bit at halftime and slow them down a little bit while speeding up a little bit more.”

The “slowing them down part” came on defense, and the Saints stood firm out of the halftime gate. Four minutes into the second half, Neumann-Goretti was on a 12-4 run, and the Patriots (15-2, 7-1 PCL) found themselves in a 59-48 hole. The Saints led by 12 at the end of three quarters, and after seven more fastbreak points to start the fourth, they were up 77-62, racing to another PCL victory.

As usual, it was a balanced scoring effort for Neumann-Goretti, and there was no shortage of points to go around. Every one of the five starters was in double figures, and they accounted for 91 of the team’s 98 points.

Zane Martin led the way with 22 points and also had nine rebounds and five assists. Point guard Quade Green had 20 points and eight boards, and Rasheed Browne also notched 20. Big man Dhamir Crosby-Roundtree had 18 points, a few of them coming on some thunderous dunks. And Vaughn Covington rounded it out with 11 points and three assists of this own.

As Arrigale pointed out afterward, “once we start running away, it’s hard to catch us.” And the running away for the Saints was as much about defending and grabbing rebounds as it was about offense to start the second half.

They limited Carroll to just 14 points in the third quarter. And Patriots’ senior Ryan Daly, who had a game-high 33 points, was limited to 10 after halftime.

“We got into the locker room and talked about a few things. We had to do a better job of knowing where Daly was,” Arrigale said. “We had to slow him down, he wasn’t going to stop shooting. I thought even when we played good, initial defense in the first half, we didn’t get all the rebounds. We did a better job of rebounding the ball and once we were able to clear anyone contesting the rebound, we were off to the races.”

When Neumann-Goretti got racing, it didn’t really matter who had the ball, as Green, Brown, Covington and Martin are all very capable scorers and passers in transition. And that became too much for Carroll to contain and counter as the game went along.

“This team right here, we’ve been doing this for two years,” Green said. “Ever since last year, we’ve been running like this. Everybody can score, everybody can touch the ball and everybody can get shots.”

For Carroll, it was another loss to Neumann-Goretti, the team that topped the Patriots in both the PIAA Class AAA state title game last year. Point guard Josh Sharkey filled the box score with 17 points, nine assists and six rebounds, while forward Miks Antoms added 11 points and four rebounds. But Carroll left hoping it will get another shot or two at Neumann-Goretti this season.

“It was tough (playing against that pace),” said Daly, who also had seven rebounds. “They play that way and they’re really good at it. Hopefully we’ll be able to handle better if we get a chance to play them again.”