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Close's career night powers Phoenixville on senior night

02/02/2017, 11:15pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Avery Close (above) had 30 points as Phoenixville downed Upper Merion 63-59 in OT on Thursday. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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It wasn’t how Avery Close pictured his senior night going.

At halftime of Phoenixville’s regular-season finale, the Phantom wing had just two points as his team trailed Upper Merion by seven. He’d missed all but one of the seven shots he’d taken in potentially the last home game of his high school career.

“I was just thinking about how rough it would be to lose our senior night,” he said. “That goes with you for the rest of your life.”

It’s a night Close and his classmates will remember for a long time, that’s for sure.

The do-everything senior turned it on in the second half, pouring in a career-best 30 points to help Phoenixville to a 63-59 win in a game that took overtime to be decided.

Close was one of seven seniors honored in a ceremony before the game, a group that’s been together since sixth grade at Phoenixville Middle School. And he was far from the only one to make an impact on the win.

Wing forward Shyheim Abernathy (6-foot-4) had 19 points and 11 rebounds, plus two each in the assist, steal and block categories. Point guard Phil Meszaros (5-9) only scored one point but has four steals and four assists. Mount Union football commit Nasir Green (6-2) had four points and two boards, while Dalton Jowder (5-10) and Hunter Herschell (6-0) chipped into a strong Phantoms defensive effort against the Pioneer Athletic Conference’s Frontier division front-runner.

“It means everything to our season,” Close said. “We’ve talked about how this was our season this whole time, we’ve been playing together our whole lives, and to win this big game on senior night, like this, it just means everything.”

Close hit the game’s biggest shot, a 3-pointer from the left wing to put the Phantoms (14-8, 8-5) up one, 55-54 with two minutes left in the extra session after Upper Merion’s Ethan Miller put the Vikings up with a layup to open overtime.

“Before I even caught it I knew I was shooting it,” Close said. “That was a big possession for us, I thought. I thought if we’re going to make a bucket we’ve got to take the lead.”

Junior guard Zion Small made it a three-point lead with just over a minute to play on a driving layup. Close went 5-for-6 from the foul line to close out the win, knocking down his 29th and 30th points on a pair of free throws with three seconds remaining.

That was the cap on a tremendous second half and extra session for the 6-6 wing, who missed the first shot he took in the third quarter but then connected on his next seven shot attempts over the remainder of the second half.

His well-rounded effort -- Close also collected eight rebounds, four blocks, three assists and two steals -- was representative of the type of season he's been having.

“We knew Avery was going to have a big year,” Phoenixville coach Eric Burnett said. “Coming in, he’s just such a hard worker, great kid and he was poised for a great year.”

With last year’s do-everything wing Christian Kelly now a freshman at Kutztown, Close has stepped up to try to fill the gap left by the program’s second all-time leading scorer.

“I felt like the team was on my shoulders now, Christian kind of passed the torch to me,” Close said. “Christian was a fantastic player and it’s hard to fill in his shoes, but I felt like I haven’t done it alone, help from Shy, Hunter, Phil, Nas, Dalton, all of the seniors, they’ve helped me and we’ve just been doing so well together.”

Throughout the first three quarters, it didn’t look like Phoenixville’s night would end happily, even as Close started to heat up. Upper Merion (12-9, 8-4 PAC) had 45-34 lead going into the fourth quarter thanks to a sharp-shooting effort led by senior forwards Chris Carita and Ethan Miller.

With Vikings senior forward and Holy Cross forward Matt Faw still out due to a broken bone in his foot, the 6-6 Carita knocked down four 3-point attempts for 21 points. All three of his third-quarter 3-pointers stunted Phoenixville runs; one responded to an Abernathy triple, and two others came back-to-back to push the lead to nine after Close had previously dropped consecutive long balls to bring Phoenixville within three.

“The whole game I felt like we’d get a 3 that would give us some momentum, they’d come right back down and swap another 3,” Close said. “At one point we were able to score on them but we couldn’t stop them, so we weren’t really getting anywhere.

“Once we started getting stops, that’s when we were able to get a run.”

Miller, another 6-6 forward, also finished with 21 points, including a 3-point play with four seconds left in overtime to force Close back to the line for his last two shots.

Joe Breece, a 6-0 Upper Merion guard, grabbed 13 rebounds and had three assists, two steals and a block to go along with two points.

But the Vikings couldn't withstand the Phantoms' full-court pressure for quite long enough. Phoenixville pulled within four points with 2:30 to play, and finally tied it on a Small foul shot with a minute left in regulation.

The Phantoms actually had a chance to win it in regulation after Upper Merion committed one of its 19 turnovers with 30 seconds left, but couldn't connect on a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Regardless, by that point they had all the momentum.

"We went into this game we were going to pressure for four quarters and knew that eventually we’d get to where we wanted to be," Burnett said. "Credit to our guys for hanging in there, we didn’t play too many guys tonight so they exhausted themselves, exactly what we expected, and I’m proud of them.”

Phoenixville now has to wait for the result of Friday night's Boyertown/Norristown game to see if it will get a chance to be in this year's five-team PAC playoff; the Phantoms need a Boyertown win to sneak in as the fifth spot for a game against No. 4 Methacton.

Either way, they'll be playing in the 16-team District 1 5A playoffs, which begin on Feb. 22. In the latest District 1 power rankings, released Monday, Phoenixville was currently in the No. 10 slot, two behind Upper Merion.

"I told the guys, we did what we could do, did our job, did our part," Burnett said. "Whether we get in or not, they have a memory that’s going to stick with them for the rest of our lives.”


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