City of Basketball Love

Graham Foley (@graham_foley3)
& Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

To understand what Westtown basketball has become, one only needed a peek inside the Calvin Gooding Arena at Haverford College on Friday night.

If you were one of the lucky 1,200 people to get a seat for the Friends Schools League Championship between The Shipley School and Westtown School, you did not have much elbow room.

Fans packed the relatively small gym and a couple hundred more stood in the corners and by the doors to catch a glimpse at a Westtown roster that boasts several future pros.

That’s what Moose basketball has become under head coach Seth Berger, a spectacle bigger than the game itself. Audiences flock to see Mohamed Bamba, the senior center and likely lottery pick whose final four college choices are Duke, Kentucky, Texas and Michigan; to see Brandon Randolph, the 6-6 Arizona commit who might be the best pure shooter in the prep ranks; to see Cameron Reddish, the 6-8 do-everything junior point guard who’s got his pick of colleges.

And they never go home disappointed.

How big is Westtown basketball? There’s a Sports Illustrated film crew following the team around all year. Head coach Seth Berger is mic’d up for every game.

“I think it’s great for the community, ultimately the attention is because we have a great group of players,” Berger said. “I told them before the game the house was going to be packed because everyone was going to be there to watch them play. And they sure looked unbelievable tonight.”

On this particular night, the draw was the Friends’ League Championship, which pitted the three-time defending champions against a Shipley squad that had never before made it to the league championship.

The atmosphere at Haverford College was more like a college game than a high-school league title game.  Fans poured out into the gym’s lobby; even into the second quarter, there were still a few dozen people in line, waiting for people to exit so they could enter for a glimpse of the spectacle.

And no offense to the Gators -- who boast a talented junior guard of their own in Sam Sessoms and another potential Division I big man in sophomore Ray Somerville -- but it was never close. It was never going to be close.

Behind a 27-point performance by Randolph and 19 from Bamba, the Moose took down the Gators by a score of 97-72.

It was over immediately. Bamba, the 6-11 freak of nature, began the game by taking the tip-off and driving straight to the hoop to deliver an electrifying windmill dunk. The entire crowd -- even some of the Shipley fans -- erupted at the Harlem Globetrotter-like play.

“It set the tone,” Bamba said. “It was with a little soft touch but I had to set the tone early. Their fans, I couldn’t tell if they were cheering for us or booing us or whatever but to me, that decided the game right then and there."

But no matter what the opposing fans’ reaction may have been, Bamba’s response was simply to smile.

The way the Moose play, they're used to turning opposing fans in their favor, with their array of crowd-wowing alley-oops and infectiously fun attitude.

Led by the charismatic Bamba, whose brains match his elite basketball talent, it's impossible to hate Westtown.

“One thing that I do that other people don’t is I just smile at [the opposing fans],” Bamba said. “Like, some of the things they say is actually pretty funny and the interactions with them are just funny.”

From there, the Moose just poured it on. Bamba made his first eight field goals including three 3-point shots. He simply would not miss.

Reddish followed suit, knocking down his first six shots and finishing six of seven from the field with 15 points. Randolph had the best offensive game, knocking down nine of his 18 attempted shots and totalling 27 points.

The victory guaranteed Westtown the top seed in the PAISSA playoffs as the Moose look to defend their state title from last year. However, winning a title is not necessarily the top priority for Westtown.

With Bamba projected to be drafted third overall in the 2018 NBA according to DraftExpress and Reddish likely to be a top pick in 2019, the focus of the program and its head coach is more on shaping the futures of the individuals, rather than the results of their current season.

“I think a high school coach’s job is to prepare his kids for the next level,” Berger said. “Some of these kids are so special that I feel like I have to make sure they’re ready by the time they go to college, because they better be ready to perform when they get to college so that they can be where they should be in the league.”

With such an extraordinary wealth of talent, Berger’s Moose are flying just about as high as any high school basketball team these days.

“We have two projected lottery picks, a kid who I think is a real chance to be a one-and-done, our fourth best player [6-9 junior Jake Forrester] has an offer at Indiana and he’s probably tied with the kid who’s going to Stony Brook [6-9 senior Anthony Ochefu] who I think had 12 rebounds today,” Berger said. “That’s the best starting five I’ve ever seen.”

The cupboard will be far from empty next year, with Reddish and Forrester leading a team that will include impressive 6-7 freshman Noah Collier, and new talent is sure to come to the school just as Bamba, Randolph, Forrester and Reddish did at various points during their high school careers.

But this group is special.

And he while Berger knows such unparalleled greatness won’t stay at Westtown forever, it’s definitely something to enjoy while it lasts.

“No, we’ll never have a starting five as good as that,” he added, then joked: “Until I come out of retirement and start playing again.”