skip navigation

Neumann-Goretti's Quade Green stakes claim as city's best in win

12/15/2016, 1:30am EST
By Josh Verlin

Quade Green went off for 37 points as Neumann-Goretti downed Imhotep in a clash of city titans. (Photo: Kathy Leister/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

In the closing minutes of a high-powered matchup against Imhotep Charter, Neumann-Goretti senior Quade Green wanted to remind the packed house at Arcadia University of one thing.

This is his city.

Like Ja’Quan Newton, who captivated crowds in the Saints uniform as a senior three years ago, Green wants to prove he’s in a class by himself every time he takes the court.

“I’ve got to, really,” he said. “My name blew up really over the summer so I got to really be that guy right now.”

The 6-foot-tall guard and University of Kentucky commit showed why he’s one of the top playmakers in the country with another spectacular outing to close out a terrific doubleheader at the Glenside school.

In a game loaded with Division I talent and the overwhelming state championship favorites in two different classifications, Green was the supernova amongst stars. His 37-point performance in Neumann-Goretti’s 87-73 was, while not without its flaws, thoroughly impressive.

Like all great performers, he got better as the game went on, scoring 24 in the second half. For the game he was 11-for-19 overall, including 4-for-8 from 3-point range. The numbers don’t come close to telling his ability to dribble through a ferocious Imhotep defensive effort time and again or the difficulty of the shots he hit, which ranged somewhere between Simone Biles and Nadia Comaneci on the judges’ scale.

There were pull-up jumpers from NBA range that seemed as effortless as a layup. A pull-up jumper moving to his left through the lane that found nothing but net. Absorbing contact on the baseline and still squaring up in mid-air to knock down a jumper.

“All the time, everyone wants to come see a show so I have to put a show out for them,” Green said. “If I don’t they’ll be like, ‘he’s going to Kentucky, why?’ So I’ve got to put a show on every day and every game.”

It’s nothing that surprises his teammates, not anymore.

“He is one of the hardest working people I know,” said senior Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, though he couldn’t help from needling his classmate: “I feel like Quade should have made more free throws, honestly; he missed a couple in the beginning.”

Green did miss three of his first five from the line. He rebounded to make his final nine of the night, along with seemingly everything else he put up in the second half.

Cosby-Roundtree was stellar on his own, as the 6-8 Villanova commit finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds, making all but one of his seven field-goal attempts and knocking down all 12 of his foul shots.

“We kind of have a little competition between me and (Quade) who wants to be the guy in the city,” Cosby-Roundtree said. “I see it in him, he’s trying to do it, but I’m trying to work just as hard.”

“He was rock-solid early, he kept us in the game,” Saints coach Carl Arrigale said of his big man. “He was great on the foul line today, and he’s always solid defensively. And he’s just getting better everyday.”

Imhotep, behind the scoring ability of 6-3 senior guard and South Carolina commit David Beatty (16 points), matched Neumann-Goretti blow-for-blow for a while, leading 18-17 after one and trailing just 34-31 at the break.

The Saints turned that three-point halftime lead into a seven-point advantage at the end of the third and watched it grow to 10 early in the fourth. But the Panthers had one final push in the reservoir.

Thanks to the strong play of senior Daron Russell, Imhotep closed to within two points with under six minutes to play. Russell, a Rhode Island commit, went 11-for-11 from the foul line in the fourth quarter alone to make the comeback happen, finishing with 25 points to lead his team.

Green didn’t mind the competition. In fact, he seemed to relish it.

These are two programs that have done battle in big games at the state level before, meeting in the PIAA class AAA semifinals a year ago, a game Neumann-Goretti won 76-69 before taking home its sixth state title in seven years. Now, with Imhotep moving up to the 4A class, they won’t have to see each other again, though that certainly didn’t take any of the intensity out of a packed house at Arcadia.

“It makes me fight harder really, it makes me fight harder,” Green said. “That’s all, it makes me want to put some more shows on. I wish we could have went 10 quarters, really.”

An alley-oop slam to Cosby-Roundtree extended the lead back to six, then scored five straight of his own to make it a 10-point game with 2:30 left. Four more Green points capped off a 19-6 run that put the game away, leading to the benches emptying with little more than a minute to play.

In addition to the two stars, the Saints got solid efforts from sophomore guard Christian Ings (10 points), junior forward Marcus Littles (eight rebounds) and senior wing Mike Milsip (seven points), who hit two big shots early in the fourth quarter to help put space between the teams before Russell’s foul shooting.

“I said to the coaches before the game, I dont know whats going to happen -- we’re going to win, we’re going lose, whatever,” Arrigale said. “But we’ll find out about some guys tonight, and I think we did.”


Recruiting News:

HS Coverage:

Tag(s): Home  Old HS  Catholic League (B)  Neumann-Goretti  Public League A (B)  Imhotep