City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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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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With the clock ticking down on the upcoming high school basketball season, most programs have begun their full-team preseason workouts in preparation for the 2016-17 campaign.

Then there are schools like Upper Moreland, who currently have five core players still in the thick of football practice, with a thanksgiving game against Lower Moreland looming at the end of the schedule.

Yes, that means head coach Matt Heiland will have about two weeks to get his team ready for a difficult early-season slate that includes the likes of Council Rock North, Hatboro-Horsham and Cheltenham within the first two weeks of the season. 

No, it doesn’t even slightly change the optimism shared by both himself and his talented roster for what they feel they can accomplish this season.

“We’ve got to make sure everybody is on the same page,” Heiland said. “We’ve got to make sure everybody has bought into the concept is and knows what our goals are. Our goal hasn’t changed...our goal is to get to the district championship game. 5A is going to be a challenge, but we expect to be good, we expect to compete.”

The Bears have a bevy of talented returning players from last year's team that went 9-11, and although a large chunk is still playing football, Heiland believes this team has the pieces to be the best of his three years as varsity head coach.

Included in that experienced category is a large group of upperclassmen entering its third year on the varsity roster. The leaders of which – senior guard Damian Washington and junior point guard Ryan Coyle – will be somewhat the focal points on a deep and balanced roster.

The Bears are littered with shooters; the best of which being Washington, who made 59 three-pointers last season for an overall shooting mark of 39 percent. Upper Moreland also brings back junior sharpshooter Brett Brossman, who hit 40 threes as a sophomore.

Heiland's team also expects to get strong contributions out of its undersized frontcourt, with the likes of 6-foot-2 junior forward – and offensive lineman at 295 pounds – Jake Villanueva, and athletic 6-foot-3 senior forward Shane Stone, who averaged 10.8 ppg and 8.8 rpg and looks to be this year's defensive leader. 

Rounding out the Bears' large senior class are Casey Decker, Anthony Green and Derek White, each of which has seen substantial time on varsity. 

According to Heiland, not only will this be the best and most experienced team he’s at head coach, but arguably could be one of the best in his eight years as a volunteer, JV coach and now head coach within the Bears’ program, other than their 2013 team that won the District 1 Class AAA title.

“(2013) was a very senior-laden team, we had a core group of captains and we had some underclassmen who stepped up as well,” he said. “It’s a season I’m hoping we can match if not be better than them, obviously it’s 5A, it’s a little bit different this year than AAA was for us, but between that year and this year they’re the only two years where I think we have this much experience with this much skill.”

At Upper Moreland, Heiland mentioned that basketball tends to play third fiddle to the Bears’ highly-touted baseball program and their football team. That doesn’t mean this year’s multi-sport athletes aren’t ready to help the basketball team reach new heights.

Coyle, for example, who also plays wide receiver for the football team, has been developing since his freshman year into what is now his current role as the main point guard and the key-holder of the Upper Moreland offense.

Backing him up at the point guard position will be 5-foot-7 sophomore Christian O'Donnell, a talented young guard who can defend both on and off the ball and facilitates the offense at a high level, will look to compete for a few extra minutes behind Coyle. 

For Coyle, though, after being the secondary ballhandler behind Christian's older brother Brendan O'Donnell last year, when he averaged 4.5 ppg and 3.5 rpg, he's ready to fill a much more familiar position at the point. 

“I’m really excited for that, because all my life growing up I’ve played point guard, and throughout the offseason and AAU I usually play point guard,” Coyle said. “I feel like that’s where I’m at my best, with the ball in my hand, being able to really get my teammates involved, and also I can attack the rim for myself.”

With an experienced roster like the one that has been developed at Upper Moreland, obviously there are goals regarding the 5A district playoffs, but the optimistic and driven mindset doesn’t stop there for this hungry group of Bears.

They may play in one of the toughest divisions in the area, the Suburban One American division, alongside the likes of Plymouth-Whitemarsh, Hatboro-Horsham and Cheltenham, but they have their sights set on winning it for the first time in over thirty years.

The most encouraging part of that ambitious goal? It didn’t come from the top.

“A lot of our guys, it came from them,” Heiland said. “That wasn’t a goal that the coaches set out for, it was ‘coach, what do we have to do to win the league championship?”

“That’s a tall task,” he added. “But we feel we have the pieces that we can compete with any of those teams, and we can be a force in the league.”