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Prepping for Preps '16-17: Penn Charter

11/26/2016, 2:30pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Adam Holland (above) and Penn Charter pulled off a surprising win in last year's Inter-Ac opener. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

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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Whether or not Jim Phillips was going to be able to revitalize Penn Charter’s basketball program was likely answered in the Quakers’ first Inter-Academic League game a year ago.

Coming off a one-league-win season, with a bunch of unproven young players and going up against a powerful Episcopal Academy squad expected to compete for the league title, Penn Charter surprised many in the crowd at Philly U by shutting down the Churchmen en route to a 52-36 win.

It helped, of course, that Phillips was plenty familiar with the Inter-Ac, having spent 10 seasons (2000-11) as Penn Charter’s head coach, leading the Quakes to league titles in 2003 and 2004. Aside from Malvern Prep, which changed coaches in 2013 when Jim Rullo took the Neumann job and John Harmatuk came in to replace him, the other schools in the league still had the same coaches and systems they had when Phillips was last in charge.

And while he might not have had stars like Sean Singletary (Virginia) or Rob Kurz (Notre Dame) in the rotation anymore, Phillips showed his new players that he knew what he was doing when it came to scouting the Inter-Ac.

“I saw it in when (our opponents) implemented defensive strategies,” junior guard Mason Williams said. “I saw him able to get us out of those strategies or get us to work to our advantage, even when we’re impeded by the other team.”

The Quakers bonded quickly with Phillips, who stayed at the school in his role as a middle school math teacher even when he wasn’t coaching. It didn’t take long for him to regain the reins of the program, and it was clear at a recent practice for Year Two that Phillips is back where he belongs.

“He likes to joke around, likes to make people laugh, but when it comes practice time, he’s very serious,” senior guard Adam Holland said. “I definitely took a liking to that because I’m a very serious business, and I felt we kind of clicked from the first practice. He definitely gets his point across, he’s very loud, I would definitely say he gets through to his players, he makes everybody know what he wants done in a certain way.”

The Quakers finished last year with a 13-10 record, going 4-6 in Inter-Ac play, a nice improvement over a 4-21 (1-9) season that was the last of Lynard Stewart’s four years at the 327-year-old School House Lane institution.

And with a trio of talented scorers returning, as well as some key reserves and complimentary pieces, Penn Charter’s feeling like they could already be back to being right in the mix for league titles.

“I thought we definitely left a couple (wins) on the table,” Holland said. “But as a ‘rebuilding’ year I thought it was a great rebuilding year, a lot of guys showed a lot of promise, a lot of potential.”

Three of those “guys” in particular will be looked upon to lead the way this year.


Junior guard Mason Williams (above) will be counted on to be the Quakers' go-to scorer this year. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Williams was the team’s breakout star last year, averaging a team-high 13.2 ppg after he scored a grand total of three points at the varsity level as a freshman. The 6-foot-4 shooting guard is an athletic guard who didn’t always take advantage of that a year ago, preferring to settle for jumpers, but he’s developing his slashing ability along with a nice feel for getting into the mid-range.

“He has a real feel for the in-between thing, I think now he’s got to understand the only way to do it on a consistent basis when you’re one of the guys that other teams are going to be game-planning is you’ve got to get to the foul line,” Phillips said. “And you can do that every night, but in order to get to the foul line you’ve got to do more than stand behind the arc and play, and he’s been much better at that.”

Holland, a 5-8 point guard who’s committed to Rutgers for baseball, averaged 7.8 ppg and 2.8 apg. And Ryan Holmes, a 6-3 shooting guard, will repeat his freshman season after averaging 5.3 ppg last time around, including two double-digit scoring performances in league play.

Gone are Harrison Williams (9.3 ppg) and three other seniors, Jake McCain, Evan Ferrell and Michael Berk, who combined to chip in 9.5 ppg. But the rest of the rotation returns, including junior Owen Pighini (6-1), senior Dylan Burnett (6-1) and senior Mike Hnatowsky (6-2), the Inter-Ac’s all-time leading passer on the gridiron.

It is a team without much in the size category but Phillips isn’t worried about that, saying “we’re void of size, but I don’t know that in the high school game, that that’s so different, a lot of people are devoid of size.”

Considering none of the returning rotation members had seen any significant varsity minutes before 2015-16, Phillips is expecting a noticeable improvement across the board.

“We talk about that growth between your first year and your second year -- everybody talks about in college, that from your freshman year to sophomore year is the biggest leap. I argue that it’s not freshman year to sophomore year, it’s from your first exposure to the floor to your next year, whether that’s sophomore to junior, whatever it is,” he said. “So we go to Adam Holland, Mason Williams, Dylan Burnett, Michael Hnatkowsky, Owen Pighini, every guy that played for us last year was their first real dose other than the few who left. So I’m counting on natural development just from your first exposure to your second, being a little bit more savvy and seasoned about some things.”

The Quakers are far from alone in thinking they’ll be involved in the Inter-Ac championship race as the rest of the league tries to finally dethrone Germantown Academy (24-6, 9-1), winners of the last four titles.

Episcopal, led by Navy commit Nick Alikakos (22.7 ppg), finished 8-2 in league play, that loss to Penn Charter keeping them from a share of the trophy. Malvern Prep (16-13, 5-5) returns the vast majority of its rotation -- as does the Haverford School (10-15, 4-6), which also adds 6-5 Octorara transfer and reclassified sophomore Christian Ray to the mix.

But Penn Charter is as optimistic as any of them.

“This season, I think and a lot of my teammates think that we have a chance to win the Inter-Ac,” Williams said. “I know last year we all kind of talked about it, but I don’t know if we really believed it, but this year I feel like we really have a shot.”


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