City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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HERSHEY — Remembering the last time Harrisburg collided with Hempfield in postseason play — especially since he collected the game-winning hoop — Chris Whitaker understood why his coaches wanted to go on the attack.

In other words, flash some old-school Harrisburg basketball.

Unleash constant physical defensive pressure in an effort to speed up the Black Knights and force them out of their comfort zone. Get in the passing lanes against a Hempfield squad that thrives on cuts and screens. Attack the backboards with passion.

All of it was in play Saturday — along with plenty, plenty more — when the 6-3 Whitaker and his remarkably confident Cougars teammates bounced on Giant Center’s spacious floor for the District 3 Class 6A championship game.

Some 90 minutes later, after Whitaker churned out a double-double (25 points/10 rebounds) and Penn State football verbal Micah Parsons muscled for 14 points in a convincing 67-40 victory over the Black Knights, Kirk Smallwood’s Cougars (19-6) were hoisting the school’s 12th district championship trophy.

Yet the first since Harrisburg, which will open state play next weekend against District 1’s 10th-seeded Downingtown West, prevailed in 2013.

“I wanted to make sure I left an impact on the game,” said Whitaker, who got his customary pre-game hug from scorekeeper Gloria Scott, an apparent good luck gesture that didn’t occur until halftime of Tuesday’s 61-58 win over Reading.

Whitaker, however, wasn’t alone in leaving an impact on the game.

“Two or three players don’t make a team,” added Parsons, who was 6-for-8 from the floor and snared five boards. “It’s a whole team effort. And when you get a whole team that comes together and clicks, that’s something that gets you a gold medal.”

Able to fluster and dominate Danny Walck’s Black Knights (19-9) throughout — Harrisburg led 16-5 after one quarter, 31-9 at the break and by as many as 29 points (54-25) in the fourth quarter — the Cougars quickly had the Lancaster-Lebanon League entry completely out of sorts and searching for some sort of answer.

“What we wanted to do was make them earn every part of the 94x58 and kind of wore them down,” Smallwood said.

An answer that never arrived, even though junior David Martin-Robinson pocketed 15 points, snared five rebounds and dished out three assists.

Needless to say, it was a much, much different encounter than the one Whitaker secured two seasons back with a jumper from the elbow at the horn.

On that 2015 night, at Harrisburg’s Kimber Gymnasium, the Cougars prevailed 41-39.

Whitaker definitely remembered.

“I hit the game-winner,” a grinning Whitaker recalled. “I definitely remember. I got a text about that this morning. I was telling the guy, ‘Yeah, I remember that vividly.’

“That was a really good Hempfield team. I remember they slowed the pace down, score was in the 40s, something like that,” Whitaker continued. “That was our emphasis coming into this game, quicken the pace, pick up the pace, make them uncomfortable.

“We knew they liked to play that style of play and we couldn’t afford to do that.”

As one might expect, Smallwood also had been revisiting the memory banks.

“We wanted to dictate the tempo,” Smallwood added.

Although the game was tied early, a 9-0 spurt quickly had the Cougars up 11-2 with 2:31 to go in the opening quarter — and completely in control.

The Cougars continued their two-way assault throughout the first half, holding Hempfield without a field goal for nearly 10 minutes while building a 31-7 cushion before Martin-Robinson got to the hoop near the end of the second quarter.

Whitaker netted 10 first-half points, but so did the 6-4 Parsons.

Whitaker really took over in the third quarter, however, collecting 12 points while bagging six of his seven field-goal tries as the Cougars continued to play downhill.

“With this being a district championship, I just wanted to leave a mark. I didn’t want it to be a toss-up. I didn’t want it to come down to the final minutes,” Whitaker said.

“I wanted to leave my mark on the game and prove that we were the better team.”

Just ask Hempfield.

And while numbers don’t always provide an indication of one team’s dominance over the other, here’s a few that do work when detailing Harrisburg’s effectiveness.

Such as Hempfield shooting just under 32 percent from the floor (13-for-41) and getting hammered 40-20 on the glass. Five Harrisburg players — Whitaker, 6-4 Elijah Barrett, 6-1 Tony James, Parsons and 6-5 Damion Barber — finished with five or more boards.

“This whole year we haven’t lost a rebounding battle,” Whitaker said.

“They dominate the boards, but they score as well,” Whitaker continued. “They open up stuff for different guys. They open up cutters. They open up backdoors. They open up other guys because you have to worry about them.

“So for them to play their roles, as dominant as they are, it’s just so impressive for our team. It’s really beneficial.”

Harrisburg didn’t turn the Black Knights over all that much, but the Cougars were able to prevent Hempfield from scoring off cuts to the hoop or getting uncontested looks from the perimeter. It was almost as if the ‘Burg had eight players on the court.

“We wanted to step up and disrupt them whenever they had the ball,” Smallwood said of his eighth district title as the Cougars skipper. “We wanted to get in the passing lanes, just make it as uncomfortable as we could for them. And it worked out OK.”

Smallwood also challenged those players on his team who celebrated a District 3 football championship last fall — Parsons, Barber and Zion Patterson to name a few — to try to become the first Harrisburg youngsters to claim gold in both sports in the same school year. Heck, Parsons even brought his football gold medal with him.

“That got their antenna up a bit,” Smallwood cracked.

“Coach basically told us every day at practice that we’d been here before, so lead these guys that haven’t been here before to a gold medal,” Parsons said.

“You know what it takes, so we took that mindset and did what we could to come out here and dominate in great fashion in a district championship game.”

For the others who weren’t part of Harrisburg’s football success, such as Whitaker, Saturday’s victory obviously carried all sorts of meaning.

The kind he’ll look back on fondly for the rest of his life.

“Really good. Really good,” Whitaker said. “I told them before I came out that I’ve been waiting for this since I was a little boy. To get it with my brothers, it feels amazing.”