City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The record books will say that Spring-Ford won the 2016 PAC-10 championship, and it’s the Rams who will raise the banner in their gym next fall.

But anybody who watched the Pioneer Athletic Conference’s boys basketball championship knows that’s not the way it should have been.

When Perkiomen Valley’s Justin Jaworski hit a floater with under three seconds remaining to put his team up a point, that should have been the game-winner. The clock ran all the way down--and to the hundreds of Perk Valley students in attendance, they thought their team had just won the championship, so they rushed the court.

However, Spring-Ford had called timeout, and you can see in this video that there were a few tenths of a second left when the whistles blew--the referees ultimately reset the clock to 1.1 seconds remaining. But that wasn’t the only whistle to blow; Perkiomen Valley was also assessed a technical for having its fans rush the court.

Is it the PIAA rule? Yes, it is. Does that make it right? Much less so.

There were multiple warnings during the game about staying off the playing surface, including at the end of the game. But we are talking about a group of 14-to-18-year-old students who might not realize the ramifications of their actions and certainly wouldn’t know the ins and outs of the PIAA’s technical foul justifications.

Jack Kapp, a retired PIAA official with over 30 years’ experience, said that while the call might be the technically correct one, that doesn’t mean it should have been made.

“I think discretion is the smart move there, I really do,” Kapp said. “It’s a tough situation for the referee, he or she has the right to do that, to call the technical. In that particular scenario, I would be loathe to do something like that.”

Spring-Ford’s Nigel Cooke made one of two at the foul line to tie it, and the Rams went on to win in overtime.

Good luck trying to come up with a worse way to lose a game, much less a championship.

After Perkiomen Valley upset previously-undefeated Phoenixville in the semifinals, after taking Spring-Ford to the wire, all of that goes for nothing. And as the No. 20 seed in districts, the Vikings have a long road ahead if they hope to get some banner this season, aside from the one they should be raising.

To call a technical foul in that situation in general would require some serious justification. To penalize a team because of a bunch of happy high schoolers makes almost zero sense.

“Some referees live by the letter of the law, and that’s how they feel, and depending who their supervisor is and how the assignor feels about that type of scenario,” Kapp said. “But is it in the spirit of basketball to have a team suffer a defeat because they’re fans come on the court when they think the game is over? I don’t think it’s in the spirit of the game, no.”

That’s not to take anything away from Spring-Ford, who’s had a terrific season, or senior guard Matt Gnias, who had 24 points in the win, including six in overtime to help the Rams win it.

Chris Talley has led his squad to a top-12 seed in the district tournament, and they’ll have a shot to play in the PIAA state tournament as well.

But ultimately, they’ll be raising a banner they were gifted by the referees, due to a rule that punishes behavior that’s almost impossible to stop, especially in such a big situation.

Perk Valley’s players will go a long time knowing they had the championship, only to have their friends, classmates and supporters unknowingly take it away from them. That’s not the way it should be.

“I would not have a game decided by the fans,” Kapp said. “I just wouldn’t do it.”