City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(PIAA Championship Previews: Class A | AA | AAA | AAAA)

Very quickly, Dan Jackson’s Math, Civics & Sciences squad has gone from a team playing with almost no confidence to one that’s brimming with it.

That’s what happens when a team that’s 5-13 more than two-thirds of the way through the season suddenly flips the switch, winning 10 of its next 11--including four straight in the PIAA Class A tournament.

It’s certainly the least-likely of any of Jackson’s three state finalist squads, after a championship run in 2011 and runner-up finish in 2014 that were both primarily led by Division I-level recruits and upperclassmen.

But now that they’re here, playing for the state championship at the GIANT Center in Hershey on Friday (2 PM) against Kennedy Catholic.

“People telling them ‘you’re good’ (and) I’ve got to kind of humble them because I need them to stay hungry, stay passionate,” Jackson said. “I had to humble them (Wednesday) in practice--let them know ‘you’ve won four games, but if you lose on Friday, you’ve done nothing, you’re in the same place as the teams that you’ve beat.’”

The Mighty Elephants have their hands full in the Golden Eagles (27-2), the District 10 champions.

Kennedy Catholic is led by 6-foot-8, 210-pound forward Sagaba Konate, a West Virginia commit who averages 15.5 ppg, 10.7 rpg and 2.3 bpg. He’ll be quite a matchup for MCS sophomore Ed Croswell, a 6-6 sophomore who’s been playing his best basketball to date, with 27 points and 10 rebounds in the Mighty Elephants’ semifinal win over Constitution.

A soft-spoken young man off the court, Croswell transforms into one of MCS’ young leaders when he’s between the lines.

“He’s very quiet, but believe it or not when it comes to game-time, he’s very emotional in the locker room before games, during halftime he revs the guys up,” Jackson said. “He is very reserved when it comes to anything other than basketball, but when it’s time to play he brings the energy and the intensity that we need.”

Aside from Croswell, Jackson starts a quartet of guards: juniors Malik Archer, Saheed Peoples and Tymier Johnson and sophomore Kwazhere Ransom. They’re all capable scorers, though in different ways; Peoples and Archer are 3-point specialists, Johnson is a pinball of a point guard who can get into the lane, and Ransom is a slasher who specializes in big moments--including the game-winning 3-pointer in overtime against Constitution on Tuesday.

While Konate is the big name that MCS will need to worry aobut, Kennedy Catholic head coach Rick Mancino also relies heavily on senior point guard Jason Austin, who averages 15.6 ppg and 6.0 apg; Jason’s younger brother Maceo, a 6-3 freshman, contributes 9.4 ppg and 3.8 rpg off the bench.

“We’re very lucky to have Jason,” Mancino said. “It would be very hard for me, if I had to start a team in Pennsylvania in any classification, it would be very hard for me not to pick Jason first. I know I’m his coach and I see him every day, but he’s been great this year, he really has.

Junior Drew Magestro (15.6 ppg), Konate’s younger brother Mohamed Konate (9.0 ppg) and defensive specialist Channing Phillips (6.0 ppg) round out Kennedy Catholic’s starting lineup.

Another program that’s no stranger to state tournament runs, Kennedy Catholic is playing in its 10th state championship game; the Golden Eagles won it all in 1986 and 1987, plus four straight times from 1998-2001.

Mancino was on the team during that first championship run in ‘86 as a senior, but now he’s looking for his first as head coach after taking over the program in 2009.

Last year was the furthest he’d previously gotten the program, when Kennedy Catholic lost in the semifinals to Farrell. It’s a defeat that’s weighted on Mancino and his team’s minds for the last 12 months.

“We talked about that, as I guess a negative motivation […] the feeling last year of being so close and the feeling that we didn’t take that step,” he said. “And some of our players from last year have contacted me and my response is that it eats at me that we didn’t do this last year.”

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(PIAA Championship Previews: Class A | AA | AAA | AAAA)