City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Nate Barnes certainly didn’t look like he was feeling the effects of playing six games in nine days.

In the fourth quarter of Carlisle’s trip to Lower Merion for the first of three boys games in the Kobe Bryant Classic, the 6-foot-2 Thundering Herd senior forward found himself deep in the teeth of the Aces’ defense.

And though his first look at the rim didn’t fall, he out-jumped three Lower Merion defenders to grab the rebound, going up immediately for another shot. When that, too, rimmed out, he again found the the strength to out-leap his opposition, getting himself a third chance at a bucket.

Barnes left that end of the court without scoring, but the possession was emblematic of not just his effort, but that of the entire Thundering Herd squad on Saturday afternoon.

By that point, anyways, Carlisle was already well on its way to a 53-34 win.

“We were playing with a chip on our shoulder, we were playing physical, we were talking on the court, trying to get in their heads, and once we did that we felt as though we had them,” Barnes said.

The Thundering Herd were flat-out dominant on the glass, taking the rebound battle over the Aces 47-22.

Barnes -- one of three Barnes first cousins on Andre Anderson’s Herd -- finished with 10 points and 14 rebounds, including six on the offensive end.

“I don’t want to leave the court without 10 boards,” he said. “I think my season high’s been 15 or 16, but [14 is] definitely up there. It’s good, I’ll take it.”

Junior wing Ki Barnes grabbed seven rebounds to go along with 13 points. Ethan Houston, the team’s 6-7 senior forward, had nine points and six boards.

Just a night removed from a disappointing 44-41 defeat at the hands of Chambersburg, Carlisle looked much more like the team that expects to make a run deep into the District 3 and state 6A tournaments.

And that’s crucial, with big Mid-Penn Commonwealth games next week against Harrisburg and Central Dauphin East, both of which will be televised locally.

“I don’t know where that energy came from because last night, it was hard to watch,” Anderson said. “ And we just didn’t play a good game last night against Chambersburg, they got us. But coming down here the kids just played loose, they had fun, they loved each other on the court, they love playing with each other on the court, and when we do that we’re a very good team. I was ecstatic with how we came out today.”

Behind senior guard DeShawn “Dey Dey” Millington, who had all of his eight points in the first quarter, Carlisle (12-5) led 16-11 after one and 25-20 at halftime. Then thanks to Ki Barnes and the third Barnes cousin, junior Gavin Barnes, Carlisle created some more space in a 9-2 run to end the third quarter that made it 39-28 going into the fourth.

Lower Merion (9-6), which had won six straight heading into the weekend, didn’t waste any time trying to slow the game down. Aces coach Gregg Downer went into his five-out offense early in the first quarter, with the score just 3-2 in his team’s favor, and rarely did his team take a shot in the first 15 or 20 seconds of a possession.

But Carlisle wasn’t bothered at all by the change in tempo, satisfied to grind out long defensive possessions to force difficult Lower Merion shot after difficult Lower Merion shot.

The Aces finished the game shooting 12-of-43, just 4-of-20 from 3-point range.

“A lot of teams that we play this year try to slow the pace down because they know we’re a fast-paced team, we like to push the ball a lot,” Ki Barnes said. “We knew what we had to do, and as they were slowing the ball down we know we had to push it still.”

“We’ve been struggling to guard the 3-point line as of late but I thought the guys played the 3-point line tremendously tonight,” Anderson added. “We played as a unit, which is what we’ve been preaching; we haven’t had that chemistry the last couple of games, but tonight they all played together, all five guys on the court.”

Senior guard Noah Fennell led Lower Merion with 11 points, the only member of his team to get into double figures.

Lower Merion, currently in third place in the Central League (8-2), gets back into league play on Tuesday with a visit from Garnet Valley.