City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Facing eventual surgery, Jair Bolden had a decision to make.

The Westtown point guard had re-injured his left shoulder in January, and thought that would be it for his senior season. But his doctor gave him an out.

“He said he wouldn’t advise it, but if it re-injures…he thought maybe I’d get lucky and it would be the same surgery, same recovery time,” Bolden said. “He was was like ‘if you want to take the chance, you can take the chance’—and there was no way I was going to miss my senior year.”

So he returned, with one specific goal in mind.

The George Washington commit, a New York native now in his third year at the West Chester (Pa.) boarding school, had helped the Moose to the Pennsylvania Independent School (PAISAA) finals in each of his first two years there, only to to fall short in the championship both times.

Now, he’s one win away yet again after his Westtown squad downed Episcopal Academy 56-42 in a PAISAA semifinal on Friday afternoon at Penn Charter.

“Jair’s about the toughest kid in America,” Westtown coach Seth Berger said. “ As our student body president, Jair is the leader of our student community, and as our captain he’s the leader of our team.”

Bolden led the way with 18 points, grabbing four rebounds while dishing out four assists and grabbing three steals for the top-seeded Moose.

“Couldn’t be happier to do it with a better bunch of guys,” Bolden said. “(We’re) just looking to play as hard as we can and come away 1-for-3 at least on state championships.”

No matter what happens on Saturday in the final against No. 3-seed Germantown Academy, Bolden will have shoulder surgery on Monday in NYC to help him get ready for his freshman year of college in the fall.

But first he’s got to help the Moose take care of business before his high school career is done. And this is a talented group, indeed: 6-foot-11 junior forward Mohamed Bamba (10 points, nine rebounds) is ranked amongst the top five players in his class, while 6-6 sophomore Cameron Reddish is similarly ranked in his own age group.

“It’s tough to coach 6-11,” Episcopal Academy head coach Craig Conlin quipped.

Despite star forward Nick Alikakos spending the last 10 minutes of the first half on the bench with fouls, No. 4 Episcopal battled to a 22-22 tie after 16 minutes despite facing a formidable deficit to Westtown in the height department.  

Reserve forwards Jack O’Connell, Colin Phillips and Kyle Virbitsky filled in admirably, grabbing a combined seven rebounds off the bench while O’Connell had the trio’s only bucket, a first-quarter layup.

“The bench guys were huge today, they did a great job,” Conlin said. “I was really proud of everybody throughout the game, but especially the bench guys, when Nick did get into trouble, that we were just able to substitute some guys in and they were able to step up and played their roles tremendously.”

After a Matt Woods triple cut the Moose lead to 30-29 with just under four minutes to play in the period, Westtown finally put its foot down. A 17-0 run lasted the next eight minutes of the contest, putting Westtown up 47-29 with 4:15 remaining in the game.

Bamba took over in the third quarter with a pair of put-back dunks, one of which was waved off due to basket interference. Then, junior wing Najja Hunter stepped up with three buckets during the fourth-quarter portion of the run.

Hunter, a 6-5 wing, finished with 17 points and seven rebounds.

“I thought this was Najja’s best game of the year, arguably at the biggest time when we needed him the most,” Berger said. “Early we took a couple of 3s that we shouldn’t have taken, he offensive rebounded and had putbacks. He was great in transition, he rebounded the ball, Najja Hunter stepped up huge for us today.”

Woods finished with 17 points to lead Episcopal in his final game in a Churchmen uniform, knocking down five 3-pointers along the way. Alikakos, a 6-7 forward with Division I offers, had all of his nine points in the second half.

“I thought we played really, really hard throughout the game,” Conlin said. “I thought we played really well in the first half, I thought the difference in the second half was we obviously didn’t shoot as well, we gave up many more offensive rebounds than we did in the first half and we turned the ball over many more times.”