City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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All season long, Penncrest has relied on Tyler Norwood to carry the load offensively. And it was a job the junior guard filled well, leading his team to a berth in the Central League playoffs as well as a top-5 seed in the District 1 5A playoffs.

But Lions head coach Mike Doyle was still waiting to see how his team would respond when his star guard finally had an off night from the floor. And on the final game of the regular season, he got the answer he wanted.

With the whole Penncrest squad struggling to hit shots, the Lions buckled down on the defensive end against a desperate Marple Newtown squad en route to a 43-28 road win.

“It’s a huge win for us,” Doyle said. “Marple had just won four in a row, they’d just beat some high-level teams.

“But the most important thing is all year Ty’s been carrying us, and this is the first game where the team carried him,” he added. “As crazy as this sounds, this is what we’ve been wanting, because now we believe these guys have the confidence that they can step up.”

Stepping up big-time was senior guard Justin Ross, who finished with a game-high 15 points. Ross and senior forward Chris Mills (7 points) each had wild buckets in the third quarter to help Penncrest survive a 13-for-43 (30.2 percent) night from the floor.

Mills’ had the craziest shot of the night, a sprawling tip-back from about eight feet out that he managed to direct towards the rim despite some physical play on the rebound.

“I went up, knew I wasn’t going to grab it so I had to do something else, so I tipped it in, it was a lucky play,” he said.

“The tip was insane,” Doyle said.

Ross followed Mills’ bucket several minutes later with a somewhat-lucky chuck of his own, getting fouled hard on a Euro-step attempt, with the ball somehow finding the bottom of the net.

The son of former Delaware head coach Monté Ross, Justin gave a lot of credit to his father for his love and pursuit of basketball.

“I just take whatever he gives me and I try to put it in my game,” the younger Ross said. “He’s done so much for me and it’s good to see it’s finally paying off on the varsity level.”

Norwood finished with 12 points, though five of those came on foul shots in the fourth quarter with the game already in hand. Senior forward Mike Mallon chipped in nine points and nine rebounds.

The win lifts Penncrest to 16-6 overall to finish out the season, with a 12-4 record in Central League play. The Lions, the No. 3 seed in the Central playoffs, will face off against two-seed Lower Merion on Sunday in a league semifinal at Harriton HS.

“It’s satisfying, it’s good to know that we could actually do it,” Ross said. “I’ve never seen (Ty) play like that but everybody stepped up. He carried us all year and it was good that we could finally carry him.”

It was certainly something of a bittersweet win for Doyle and the rest of the Penncrest program, considering the ramifications for Tigers’ first-year head coach Sean Spratt — a former Penncrest assistant — and his program.

Marple Newtown (10-12, 6-10) had been 17th in the latest District 1 5A power rankings, just a single spot out of the district playoffs. The loss almost certainly ends the Tigers’ season.

“I’m so proud of the job that he’s done,” Doyle said. “it’s just so hard, they’re so close, but he’s done such a wonderful job…I think we taught him a little too well, because I think he’s going to get it going [here].”

Senior Mark Dever led the Tigers with 11 points.

Penncrest led from end-to-end, opening up the game with an 8-0 run to give itself a cushion it kept up almost the entire way through. Marple, which didn’t score for the game’s opening five minutes and change, held the Lions to four points in the second quarter, and it was a five-point game midway through the third before Mills and Ross helped Penncrest push the advantage to 11 going into the fourth.

The fourth quarter wasn’t any prettier than the three that came before it, as Penncrest only made one field goal. Ten foul shots in the final eight minutes were enough to seal the win.

Ugly? Sure, but they couldn’t be happier.

“It makes us feel good, like we could go on and do great things,” Mills said. “If Ty’s having a bad game, we know we can come together and do something special.”