City of Basketball Love

Matt Chandik (@MattChandik)
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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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The roster changes, perhaps never more noticeably than it did this year. The faces change, plays are tweaked and players’ roles shift.

Despite that, Ridley’s goals are a constant that don’t make the slightest effort to change. They’re clearly laid out at the start by Green Raiders coach Mike Snyder, and don’t expect Ridley to deviate from what works.

“Every year since my freshman year, Coach has always outlined the same goals,” senior Liam Thompson said. “We want to win our holiday tournament, make the Central League playoff and get a home playoff game. Once you cross out those goals, more will start to appear. Once you get to the Central League playoff, you want to win it. Once you get a home playoff game, you want to win two to get a spot in the state tournament. We have a good group of guys to make it happen.”

The Green Raiders are coming off of a 26-4 campaign that featured a spotless 18-0 mark in Central League play, and they played in the PIAA tournament for the third time in four years. Long known for more its football and lacrosse programs, Ridley has been one of the biggest constants on the local circuit in recent years and it’s clear that the expectations aren’t lowered just because they lost an incredibly strong nucleus that featured the likes of league MVP Brett Foster (East Stroudsburg), Ryan Bollinger (Penn State-Harrisburg) and Julian Wing (DeSales).

Back-to-back Central League championships tend to do that to you.

“Our guys have seen what it takes to get to that level and they understand that it takes a lot of hard work,” said the sixth-year coach, whose teams have made the District One playoffs every year. “They know that it can be very rewarding and exciting when you play in and win a lot of big games. To play in big games, you have to win a lot of games. We’ve made states in three of the past four years and played in the Central League title game in three of the past four years. We had a good group of kids who did their jobs and we’re hoping that this group can keep things going.”

It won’t be easy. There’s a lack of clarity as to who will fill in certain roles, but Snyder knows he’ll able to lean on a senior core of Thompson, Jimmy Bramwell and Damir Fleming. From there? It’s anyone’s guess.

“We lost a lot of scoring, so we’re going to need Liam to do more scoring,” Snyder said. “We’re asking him to expand his role from what he’s done the past two years. Last year, his role was to shoot the three, but we need him to drive the ball now, create passes and shots and rebound the ball.”

Those expectations aren’t lost on Thompson, either.

“I was always taught that if defenses disrespect me, I’m going to bury a shot,” Thompson said. “But I hope I can show that I can be the guy who can facilitare and play solid defense.

Bramwell and Thompson have great chemistry together because they’ve been playing together since, oh, forever. Snyder likes Bramwell’s perimeter shooting, while you can expect to see lots of Fleming with the ball in his hands. It took him a while to learn Ridley’s offense after transferring in from Cardinal O’Hara, but he became more comfortable in his role as the season went along.

This year, there’s no time for an acclimation period, and Snyder needs Fleming to be at his best from the first tip.

“It’s almost like starting over because we’ve had so many kids returning the past couple of years that we don’t have anymore,” Snyder said. “We have kids who need to understand what it takes to play varsity basketball. The effort needs to be higher. Our defensive intensity and fundamentals need to be picked up. Everyone needs to know their role and not do anything that they’re not capable of doing.”

Snyder will juggle around some other moving parts to find a seven-ish man rotation that suits the team best. He’s got quite a few seniors, so some players will only be one-year varsity players, but it’d be silly to count against Ridley’s track record under Snyder.

“We should be very competitive. The difference might be a play here or a play there and whether we can make those plays,” Snyder said. “A lot of our games will come down to two, three or four crucial plays, like hitting both free throws in a 1-and-1, taking a charge, or running a set right and getting a layup out of it. If we can make those plays, we’ll be pretty good.”

History says you should assume that the Green Raiders will make those plays more often than not.