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PIAA Class 3A: Neumann-Goretti completes four-peat in dominant fashion

03/24/2017, 1:00am EDT
By Michael Bullock

Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree (above) and Neumann-Goretti captured their fourth consecutive state championship on Thursday. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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HERSHEY — As he approached Neumann-Goretti’s giddy Giant Center locker room Thursday night — a crowd gathered right outside the door — Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree had four fingers on each of his hands raised in celebratory fashion.

That’s right, four. Not one. Not three. Not all five.

While those outside Carl Arrigale’s wonderfully successful basketball program might not have understood the symbolism associated with Cosby-Roundtree’s animated gesture, every single one of the Saints’ players, coaches and managers definitely got it.

Especially since Neumann-Goretti accomplished a program first — something that’s hard to do in Arrigale’s perpetually strong program — by capturing its fourth straight PIAA boys’ basketball championship and seventh in eight years.

“Four in a row, man,” a grinning Cosby-Roundtree admitted with delight.

“I can’t explain how I feel right now. It’s just a great feeling. I’m so happy that I won these four state championships with my brothers. It’s so exciting.”

“It was something we wanted to do,” Arrigale added. “Obviously, we wanted to be the first Philly team to do it actually since [states] came around.

“These guys wanted to go out that way and we always talk about it, once the state tournament starts, at the end of this tournament there’s only going to be a certain number of teams that are gonna be able to say they won their last game.

“And we always want to be one of those teams.”

Just like last year, this one came rather easily.

Popping four players into double figures and creating all sorts of separation with an absolutely lethal burst to start the second quarter, Arrigale’s Saints handled Lincoln Park Charter 89-58 in the PIAA’s Class 3A title game.


Quade Green (above) had 22 points to cap off his Neumann-Goretti career. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Kentucky-bound lead guard Quade Green, who now owns a box set of gold medals, paced the Saints (24-7) with 22 points and also dished out eight assists. Green was an efficient 6-for-7 from the floor and 3-for-4 from beyond the arc.

“Just a blessing to be in this position right now,” Green said. “God put me in this position and I just went out and was able to take what I could take.”

Cosby-Roundtree, the 6-9 Villanova recruit who also has a fourth gold waiting for his trophy case, added 15 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and blocked four shots.

Also reaching double digits before the one-sided contest came to a close was springy sophomore guard Christian Ings (13 points) and East Stroudsburg commit Mike Millsip (11). Noah Warren came mighty close, too, burying three treys for nine points.

And while this game was fairly close as the opening quarter played out — Neumann-Goretti scored the final four points to grab a 17-9 lead — once the Saints created all sorts of separation by unloading a 14-0 salvo that severely wobbled Lincoln Park and had Mike Bariski’s Leopards (25-6) down 31-9 the countdown to gold was on.

Even though there was still more than 20 minutes to play.

As for that lightning-quick 14-0 burst, Green found Cosby-Roundtree for a pair of easy finishes to ignite the run, Ings buried his line trey off a Cosby-Roundtree skip pass, Emil Moody scored at the rim, Millsip stuck one back and Warren bagged a 3-pointer.

“Everybody got a touch, everybody got the ball and everybody got shots,” recalled Green, who assisted on three of the Saints’ six buckets during that stretch.

“Everything was going just great after that.”

Just like that, with the Saints’ devastating transition attack operating at a full boil and the astute Green directing traffic, the lead stood at 22 points.

By the way, Neumann-Goretti’s pivotal spurt also coincided with the Saints holding Lincoln Park scoreless for nearly six minutes.

“All I could focus on was our defense,” Cosby-Roundtree said. “I felt like we played real solidly defensively and for us to win the game we had to come in the third quarter and stay defensive-minded. That we’ve got to stop this team or we weren’t going to win.

“I felt like that was the key right there, our defense.”

And Neumann-Goretti’s bulge never slipped inside 20 the rest of the way — even though Nelly Cummings collected 35 of his 37 points from that point on.

Headed for Bowling Green, where he’ll play alongside Mastery Charter North’s Daeqwon Plowden and Archbishop Ryan’s Matiss Kulackovskis, the 6-0 Cummings concluded his splendid Lincoln Park career with 2,411 points.

That’s the fifth-highest point total in WPIAL history.

“He’s out there getting buckets,” Cosby-Roundtree said of Cummings.

“We really focused on trying to keep Cummings out of the lane early in the game,” Arrigale added. “We knew eventually — he shoots a lot of balls — that somewhere along the line he was going to start scoring some points.

“We wanted it to be when the game was kind of out of reach.”

Evan Brown also reached double digits for the Leopards, adding 13 points.

While Arrigale figured Cummings would get his — Warren, Ings and Green took turns checking the explosive senior — he wanted to make sure those points would come after his Saints took control and those points would not factor in the eventual outcome.

Mission accomplished.

So, with the game in hand, all that was left for the Saints was to keep hammering away at Lincoln Park until the final horn sounded and the celebration began.

Once the championship trophy was hoisted — along with one of the Giant Center nets — Green hustled to one end of the floor with the gold hardware tucked in his mitts.

Four consecutive state championships is quite a feat — even for a Neumann-Goretti program that always seems to be in play with a title up for grabs.

And, most of the time, it’s the Saints bouncing out with another crown.

“It’s exhilarating,” Cosby-Roundtree admitted.

“It’s a testament to how hard Coach works and how hard he pushes the people that come in and how much better they get throughout the years.”

It also helps to be efficient at the offensive end of the floor, which Neumann-Goretti obviously has done the past two years in beating Mars (99-66) and Lincoln Park.

“It’s making shots,” Green said. “We just had a good team. We had a good team and we just did what we had to do. It was our last game and everybody went hard.”

“To go out in style here the last two years, putting on an offensive show and just some really good team ball, I’m proud of that,” Arrigale said.

“When you make shots, everything else is better."


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