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Pub semifinal: Holly, King beat Constitution to head back to title game

02/21/2018, 3:30am EST
By Owen McCue

MLK's Denelle Holly Jr. is trying to follow in his father's footsteps and win a Public League championship. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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Since the age of 2, Martin Luther King senior guard Denelle Holly Jr. remembers having a basketball in his hands. His father, Denelle Holly Sr., put it there.

Holly Sr. played in the Public League at Ben Franklin High School before a college career at Cheyney. When Holly Jr. was growing up, he went and watched dad play in various leagues around the city, shooting baskets at a Fisher Price hoop on the side.

“Everything I have in my game right now, my dad helped me with,” Holly said. “Everything I got came from my dad. He started off from 2 years old I had a basketball in my hand. Ever since then, it’s been go, go, go. Basketball, basketball, basketball.”

The two recently played one-on-one with the younger Holly coming out on top, but dad still has bragging rights.  He won a Public League championship at Ben Franklin back in 1999. That’s something Holly Jr. and his teammates are trying to do at the moment.

“He keeps telling me I gotta get one because he got one,” Holly said. “I’m just going in, man, I’m trying to get a win, trying to get a public league championship like my dad.”

Holly, who spent his freshman season at Neumann-Goretti and sophomore campaign at George Washington, fell just short of a Public League championship in his first year at King last season when the Cougars lost an overtime contest to Imhotep in the title game.

After the Panthers defeated Mastery North in the first Public League semifinal at South Philadelphia High School on Tuesday night, King needed a win against Constitution to set up a rematch. Behind strong outings from Holly and senior big man Will McNair, the Cougars walked away with a 49-44 victory to get the job done.

“I’m just happy we got the win,” Holly said. “I believed in my team, I knew we could make it. We’re just going for a championship. We’ve been there last year, we came up short, but this year hopefully we can go and pick up a win.”

King and Constitution split their two regular season meetings--Constitution won the most recent matchup 72-69 on Feb. 1-- so the Cougars knew the Generals could not be overlooked if they wanted another chance at a Public League championship.

Led by senior guard Jahmir Marable-Williams, who scored 11 of his 13 points in the first, the Generals took a 30-27 lead into halftime, frustrating King into four turnovers in the final minutes of the first half.

That wasn’t going to sit well with King or its senior point guard. The Cougars started the second half on a 7-0 run, including five from Holly.

Two free throws from Holly gave King a 34-30 lead around the five-minute mark in the third quarter. They held Constitution to just five points during the period to take a 38-35 advantage into the fourth.

“I feel like it’s my team and we go as far as I go,” Holly said. “So I just gotta lead the team and get us a win.”

The senior guard finished the game with 13 points, three assists and 10 rebounds. He said he currently has interest from a handful of low DIvision I schools and some Division II programs, but is using the rest of his high school career to silence any doubters about his game.

“I am trying to prove a point because I believe I’m a Division I point guard,” Holly said. “Some don’t think so. Some do. I’m just hoping to get a Division I scholarship.”

Constitution regained the lead with 5:06 left when Damon Wall, who finished with 12 points, knocked down a pair of free throws to put the Generals up 40-38. King scored six of the game’s next seven points before McNair put the Cougars up by five with a putback dunk just past the two-minute mark.

In quite a low-scoring second half, McNair’s dunk ended up being the game sealing play. Tyree Mitchell hit a 3-point shot with 59 seconds left to close the gap to two, but Constitution didn’t score any more after that.

McNair was a perfect 4-of-4 in the first half for eight points. While he wasn’t quite as efficient in the second, he finished with 15 points and 12 rebounds and was also a force on the defensive end with six blocks.

“Will’s playing good,” Holly said. “It’s just all about confidence with Will. It’s my job to get him going. Once I get him going, he’s a hard person to stop.”

Imhotep took the first two meeting against King, by 17 points on Dec. 14 and by 14 points on Jan. 18. Holly said slow offensive stretches during the third quarter hurt the Cougars in both contests.

Why does Holly think Sunday's Public League championship will be any different than those two games or last year?

“I believe our team is more together," Holly said. "Last year, there was a lot going on. We were missing a lot of people and things like that, but now our team is so gelled and together and we believe in each other, I just believe that we can win this game.”


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