City of Basketball Love

Zach Drapkin (@ZachDrapkin)
--

(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2016-17 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed so far can be found here.)

~~~

Archbishop Carroll head coach Paul Romanczuk holds a weekly book club for seniors.

No, it’s not a social circle for golden-agers. It’s an exclusive club for his senior Patriots basketball players, who read and discuss The Hard Hat by John Gordon.

And it was so successful in its debut last season, he’s decided to make it a regular undertaking and continue it with his class of ‘17 players.

“It’s a really good book that my seniors last year, we did every Thursday after open gym, we would just talk about three or four chapters that we had read over the previous week,” Romanczuk said. “[It’s] something that I thought was pretty productive for our team last year, so I decided to do it for our team this year.”

The book examines the legacy of George Boiardi, a lacrosse player at Cornell in the earlier part of the 21st century, who epitomized what a great teammate and leader should look like.

The book club is largely about developing maturity, both for the players involved and the younger teammates they aim to lead toward success this season.

“The subtitle is ‘21 ways to be a great teammate,’ and I like to think that’s kind of the essence of our program and really it can be athletics in general,” Romanczuk said. “Anything that gets [teenagers] thinking of anything other than themselves is a good thing.”

“It’s a really good book about leadership. It’s helped us deal with some of the young kids,” added 6-4 senior sharpshooter Colin Daly, the team’s only returning starter and a recent West Chester commit. “When some of the kids are messing around, we think about the book and what to do. It has an impact, definitely.”

Romanczuk will need Daly and his other seniors -- 6-6 forward Jesse McPhearson, 6-4 guard Khari Williams, and 6-1 guard Jimmy Lake -- to provide expert leadership this year more than ever.

Graduation claimed D-I commits Ryan Daly (Delaware) and Josh Sharkey (Samford), as well as Alex House (DeSales) and Josh Rigsby (Holy Family), plus the prepping Miks Antoms (Lee Academy), all of whom have elected to continue their careers at the collegiate level. The Carroll lineup is surrounded by more uncertainty than it has in quite a while, with just one returning starter in the younger Daly, who assured that the team “might start off a little shaky, but we’ll be fine.”

“We return a bunch of other, younger guys that are going to have to grow up quickly. So it’s kind of the unknown here at Carroll, but I still think we have talent in this gym,” Romanczuk said. “I don’t think anyone’s shedding any tears for us over here, but it’s a little bit of a year in transition in that we don’t return an All-Catholic or a guy that’s been there, done that.”

Starting at the top, Daly leads Carroll’s deep group of guards after a ‘15-16 season in which he averaged 5.6 ppg behind the aforementioned graduates. He will be joined by juniors Justin Anderson (6-2), a transfer from Academy of New Church, and Jahmir Williams (5-11), who originally came to the school to play football but is now focused solely on basketball.

Anderson is a talented lefty guard with offers already from Saint Joseph’s, La Salle, Hartford, and Colgate, and has also succeeded at the EYBL level with Team Final. He joins a group of incoming upperclassmen which also features 6-5 forward Devon Ferrero and 6-3 forward Keyon Butler, both of whom saw minute time on the court last season and will contend for starting spots in ‘16-17. Those two will see considerable time in the frontcourt alongside McPhearson, the team’s stud big man.

“It’s just one of those years where now it’s time to step up and time to produce. Some of these guys were watching from the bench or getting minutes here and there and now they're going to have to step up and produce,” Romanczuk reckoned. “It’s really kind of open because we only return one starter. Obviously we have someone in Justin that has experience and we have someone in Jesse that he’s our only big guy, our only rim protector, but other than that it’s really wide-open. It’s going to be really competitive I think for spots.”

Shooting and defensive ball pressure will be the focal strengths of this Patriots team, a guard-heavy roster with multiple players whose shooting has become noticeably better over the off-season. Romanczuk also noted that the biggest position battle for Carroll will be at point guard, where the hole left by Sharkey will be hard to fill.

“There’s been just a great lineage of point guards come through here, and I’ve been blessed with some talent at that position, which is the most important position on the court. But I don’t really have a definite point guard right now that I can say to you that that’s the guy.”

There are four main players on the roster who will contend for the lead role of floor general, beginning with Williams, the oldest but not most experienced candidate for the starting point guard spot. Sophomores Mark Bradshaw (6-1) and Shawn Johnson (6-0) progressed over the summer after their freshman season and could see big minutes.

And then there’s 6-3 freshman A.J. Hoggard, a hyped-up playmaker with a lot of skill and just as much in the expectation column.

“A.J. has a real maturity about not only his personality but his game already, he does things that you don’t really even see too many juniors and seniors doing, he has a real confidence about himself,” Romanczuk said of his prized guard. “Freshmen don’t always play with the highest of motors, they don’t always know where to be defensively and their heads are spinning the first week or two. I have high expectations for him myself and I know he does of himself, I think he’s an intelligent kid that will catch on well and I think we’re going to need him this year.”

Mentoring Hoggard will be up to the seniors and Anderson, who knows a thing or two about dealing with high expectations as a young player. “He’s a big guard and can score the basketball, very crafty. And I’ve been telling him that once the season starts, it’s going to be really different than our open gym is. You have to become more mature really fast, and that’s what I had to do in my freshman year,” related Anderson.

The sophomores, with now a year of experience and growth added to their game, will also have expanded capacities in Carroll’s rotation. Luke House (6-3) got a few inches taller and improved on his shooting, catching the eye of his coach. At least one of him, Bradshaw, and Johnson “will play a lot of minutes,” according to Romanczuk.

After losing to Bishop-McDevitt in the PIAA class AAA tournament last season, turning in a successful season will require contributions across the board for the Patriots. With the PIAA’s new classification system making Carroll now a class 5A school, the team will no longer have to worry about facing Neumann-Goretti or Roman Catholic at districts, but will rather face a new set of opponents, including the likes of Archbishop Wood, Simon Gratz, and Bonner & Prendergast. It won’t make things remarkably more or less difficult for the Patriots, but will bud new rivalries and familiar opponents.

“Every game is a fight in the Catholic League. Nothing’s easy. Every game, we come out hating the other team,” Daly said. When the senior was asked which opponents Carroll looks forward to facing this year, he did not hesitate with his response: “All of them.”