City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(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.)

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It was not how Chichester’s season was supposed to end.

Despite starting two sophomores and one junior last year, Chichester managed to win more games than its previous two seasons combined. After putting together a 14-8 regular-season record, the Eagles were sure they would earn themselves a spot in the District 1 playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.

Instead, they were the first team out of the 32-team tournament, despite having more wins than several of the teams that did make it in.

The day of the bracket release -- Feb., 8, 2016, a Monday -- should have been spent preparing for a postseason appearance. Instead, head coach B.J. “Buzzy” Wood had to call up his players to tell them their season was over.

Despite finally breaking a string of seven consecutive losing seasons, there would be no postseason basketball.

See you next year.

“It hurt,” junior James Hendricks said. “Because we beat some of the teams in there. We could have definitely made it far in the playoffs.”

“I felt like we could have went far in the playoffs, and we didn’t, so we got robbed,” fellow junior Da’Quan Granberry agreed.

What hurt Chichester in the end was the unfortunate effects of District 1’s power ranking system combined with the league the Eagles play in.

The Del-Val is the smallest league in District 1, with just six teams; one of those six, Interboro, didn’t win a game last year. Another one of Chichester’s opponents, Freire Charter -- a state playoff team in 2015 -- also went the whole season without a victory.

That’s three Chichester wins that got them no points in the district rankings.

“You can’t (say), when you make your schedule up, we’re going to play all these teams because I know they’re going to get 10 wins, that’s not true,” Wood said. “And we struggled, we were 4-18, 7-15, the last seven years we weren’t over .500. Except for last year.”

However, it didn’t take too long for the Eagles to regroup and focus on the future.

“They were ready to go like two weeks after; they were like disgusted, and two weeks after they were calling me saying ‘let’s go in the gym,’” Wood said. “We had a good summer, went to West Chester twice, we were at Widener in the fall and spring...from last year to this year we’ve probably played 35, maybe 40 games.”

Despite losing the team’s two leading scorers, seniors Derrick Wells (17.5 ppg) and Jamai Womack (14.5 ppg) -- playing collegiately at Delaware Tech and Holy Family, respectively -- the Eagles are still optimistic about the 2016-17 season, and with good reason.

A class of six juniors will form the heart and soul of the program for the next two years.

Granberry, a 6-foot-4 wing whose brother Richard Granberry was a big part of Chester’s last state championship in 2012, is the team’s leading returning scorer at 13.9 ppg. A terrific athlete who can dunk with his head at or above the rim, he’s becoming a better outside shooter as well.

Last year, he went through several big growth moments, including hitting a game-winning jumper to beat Penn Wood on the road, but now he needs to become their No. 1 option on a regular basis.

“I would think right now (he’s) a low Division I player, he’s got the athleticism, he’s going to be big,” Wood said. “His brother’s 6-8, his dad’s 6-4. He’s going to grow, going to fill into his body, and a D-I school could take him and build his body up, he might be 6-4, 210, playing and shooting the ball like that.”

Providing some serious size inside is another junior, Mike Davies, who at 6-8, 250 is a big target in the paint who will make opponents think twice about attacking the rim.

“Makes it a lot easier for these kids to play outside with Mike standing in the lane,” Wood said. “It makes them that much better on defense to get the ball, we got a lot of steals off Mike standing in the lane. It makes our defense a lot better; we play man, we play zone, it makes a difference.”

Rounding out that junior class, along with Hendricks, a third returning starter: Dandre Morgan, Adam Sayed and Thomas Rogers. Also in the rotation are two seniors, Donald Blackstone and Idris Mukhtar, as well as sophomore point guard Epofanio Williams, who’s started games at several events this offseason.

On a team with a lot of friendly but shy personalities, Davies also often serves as the team’s motivator.

“We need a leader,” he said. “They’re pretty shy, so I try to take charge and try to motivate everybody. For the freshmen, to help them out, to play hard, play smart, and don’t mess around. Basketball’s serious.”

As a member of the new 5A classification, Chichester is in the same class as fellow Del-Val members Chester, Interboro, Academy Park and Glen Mills, with only Penn Wood playing in the largest 6A classification. Of the 26 5A schools in the district, 16 will make the playoffs in February. Seven of those will advance to the state bracket.

Though winning the Del-Val league would be an obvious bonus, the Eagles just want to taste the postseason. And they’ve scheduled opponents like Penncrest, Garnet Valley and Octorara with hopes of picking up more wins that will make the difference come rankings time.

“We’ve been working all offseason to make the playoffs,” Hendricks said.

This year, they’re determined not to be left out.