City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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SHAMOKIN — Dan Jackson may have brought his Math, Civics & Sciences basketball team to the edge of anthracite coal country for its first two games, but just rounding up a pair of decisive victories wasn’t the only objective on the to-do list when the Mighty Elephants headed west.

Incorporating some new personnel into the fast-paced flow that Jackson and the rest of the Mighty Elephants coaching staff want and need from a smallish lineup also was part of the plan.

Yet so was cranking up the defensive ferocity and really getting after a pair of opponents that really, really struggled against the full-court heat that MCS brought all weekend and hopes to bring against all of its Philadelphia Public League playmates and the other hammers on its testy slate.

Let’s just say that everything worked out quite nicely — even if the Elephants didn’t shoot as well on Friday night as they did Saturday while capturing the Shamokin Tip-Off Tournament.

Newcomer Jihad “Squid” Watson pocketed 18 points and doled out seven assists in Saturday’s championship, while Anthony McFall banked 16 as the Elephants popped 13 players into the scoring column en route to an 81-47 triumph over host Shamokin in the championship scrap.

Marquis Walls chimed in with eight points, while Zahir Jackson grabbed eight rebounds for an MCS group that opened the season at No. 2 in City of Basketball Love’s Class 2A preseason rankings.

One night earlier, newcomer Mohammed Semega scored 18 points and Watson finished with 16 as MCS overwhelmed Lewisburg 76-50. Semega spent last school year at Del-Val Charter.

“I have to believe it’s a confidence builder for us,” admitted Jackson, whose starters sat next to the coaching staff for the entire fourth quarter of Saturday’s championship game. “[Especially] going back into the city, where Wednesday night we have Monsignor Bonner, Thursday we play Mastery North and [next] Tuesday we play [Martin Luther] King.

“It’s a good way to build some confidence with our guys, get some continuity and know what we’re good at and build on that.”

Watson, the 6-2 junior guard who arrived at MCS after spending his sophomore year at fellow Pub hammer Martin Luther King, was named the four-team event’s most valuable player.

“It felt good,” Watson said of winning the title. “The team needed the wins.”

While Watson bagged his first five looks from the field and finished 7-for-9, McFall canned his first seven shot attempts and wound up 7-for-8. Yet even though MCS was able to turn Shamokin over — especially early — not all of those finishes were easy transition scores.

An 18-2 spurt — MCS trailed 3-2 early — had the Mighty Elephants sitting on a 20-5 cushion with 3:05 remaining in the opening quarter. Yet when the finalists headed for their respective huddles at the end of the first, MCS was holding a commanding 30-14 lead.

Knocking down 13 of its 15 shot attempts in those spiffy eight minutes had plenty to do with it, but so did sharing the basketball and turning defensive intensity into offensive efficiency.

“Just move the ball,” Watson said. “Play as a team. Get everything moving as we usually do.”

In other words, play fast at both ends of the basketball floor while making the other guys really, really uncomfortable with the pace of the game and some nasty full-court pressure.

“If we can play hard, we can beat anybody,” said Zahir Jackson, a 6-4 junior and one of three returnees to the Mighty Elephants’ high-octane rotation. “If we box out, we can beat anybody.”

On Saturday, MCS enjoyed a 43-29 edge on the backboards.

Against some of the Pub’s taller teams or against a Bonner-Prendergast outfit that has 6-8 and 6-9 available up front, getting in front of opposing rebounders is going to be critical.

“If we don’t rebound the ball, we’re not in no games and we’re getting blown out if we don’t team rebound,” Dan Jackson admitted, mentioning one of the keys to MCS enjoying consistent success.

Rebounding the basketball will be key for the Mighty Elephants, whose early eight-man rotation has one player (Walls) that stands 6-5 and another (Zahir Jackson) that goes 6-4.

They’re the forwards in a guard-heavy group that’s built for speed and quicks.

“Help boxing out, help rebounding and help scoring the ball,” Zahir Jackson added. “[The keys for us being successful are] playing fast, playing defense, playing hard.”

While Jackson, 6-3 senior McFall and 6-0 senior Kwahzere Ransom make up the experienced trio that last season helped fashion a 21-10 record, they also were part of a MCS group that reached the Public League semifinals and advanced to the state semifinals.

An overtime loss to Constitution in the semis — MCS split with Constitution during the regular season, then bested the Generals in the Pub’s Class 2A final — ended the season.

“They bring a lot of experience,” Dan Jackson said. “Knowing our system and knowing what’s expected defensively from us. Postseason experience, [since] we’re always in the semifinals in the state championship. … The leadership and the veteran experience that they bring to the table is good for the younger guys that I have.”

Yet with Watson and Semega checking in from other schools — and with Walls moving up the depth chart for his senior season — the Mighty Elephants do have some older players to plug in alongside the returnees. Factor in 5-11 Tayvine Jones and 6-2 Jabarr Slaughter, a pair of sophomores, and those two guards immediately stretch the early MCS rotation to eight players deep.

“It’s good,” added Watson, who spent much of his time on the floor with the basketball in his hands. “I feel the same way. Nothing changed. Play my game. Stay focused. Get buckets.”

Dan Jackson, who watched all-state guard and big-time scoring threat Malik Archer bounce off to junior college following last season, is certainly glad to have Watson on his side.

“We lost about five, six seniors last year,” Jackson said. “To have a guy like that who has experience, especially in the Public League championship game, brings some diversity to our team.

“We’d have been very young without a guy like him and with less experience.”

Yet the Mighty Elephants still would have been smaller than many of their opponents — that wasn’t really the case over the weekend — forcing them to quicken the pace significantly.

Maybe even more than last year.

“Offensively, we’re still kind of doing the same thing — even though we’re more guard-oriented than in past years, but we’re really only had one-and-a-half true big men. So offensively is the same thing, but defensively, because we’re small, we’re trying to get after it even more now.

“Turn up our defensive intensity a little bit more, [using] our full-court press for most of the game and trying to get our transition offense through our defense.”

While Dan Jackson already mentioned how important it is that the Mighty Elephants rebound well collectively — Zahir Jackson echoed those thoughts — there’s several other must haves, too.

“They have to buy in about being sacrificial,” Jackson said. “Knowing that any given night it could be any given guy yet sacrificing it all on defense. That’s one of the keys. It could be Ransom one night. It could be McFall one night. But still giving the same effort every night that you have to give defensively.

“And then just being scrappy and getting 50-50 balls, being gritty and just getting after it. Diving on the floor … we have to do it. If we do those things, I think we can be playing well into March.

“I believe the sky’s the limit for us.”

Plus, Ransom, McFall and Zahir Jackson already have been conditioning their teammates to the Mighty Elephants’ sparkling history and where they expect to get before this season finally comes to a close. Ransom, in fact, is the only player on the roster to play in the 2016 Class A state championship game that MCS lost to Kennedy Catholic at Hershey’s Giant Center.

MCS also played in the 2014 Class A final, falling to Lincoln Park Charter.

“In practice, they constantly tell the guys that we want to get to Hershey,” Dan Jackson admitted. “We want to get back to being the team that we were known for. They keep emphasizing that to the young guys. Of course, the young guys don’t have the same passion because they’ve never experienced it.

“They’re trying to emphasize that on them, that we are a postseason team.”

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