City of Basketball Love

Mitchell Gladstone (@mpgladstone13)
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ARDMORE — In the middle of the fourth quarter, with his team well on its way to an 11th straight victory, Gregg Downer told his whole team to come in close.

They expected to do this.

There would be no celebrating — they’d finish out the last few minutes, shake hands and head back to the locker room.

But if he was being completely honest, even Downer didn’t think it would go quite like this.

“That was probably our best half,” the longtime coach said afterward. “37-13 is not what you expect against a [high]-caliber opponent like Penncrest. But we were clicking on all cylinders.”

Certainly, that would be one way to describe Lower Merion’s 64-40 rout of the Lions Tuesday night in a clash between two of the Central League’s top teams. What many expected to be a tight-fought battle for 32 minutes quickly became a rout, and even with a young team, it’s clear that the Aces are right up with the area’s best right now.

“We’ve come together,” James Simples said. “We had tough times to start but we’ve really meshed as a group and this is what we expect. … We think we should be in the top 10 in the state and our goal was to come out here and [show] that.”

For all the youth at Lower Merion, it was Simples, the Aces’ lone senior starter who got the ball rolling against Penncrest. The 6-foot-4 guard put up nine of the night’s first 16 points on his way to 15 for the game — one of three LM players in double figures.

Even more impressive is the fact that Simples really didn’t play much last year. On a deep team with 11 seniors that advanced all the way to the second round of state playoffs, chances were sparse.

Now with the opportunity right in his lap, Simples is taking advantage.

“He’s just one of the more athletic players in the league,” Downer said of Simples. “He does have great versatility — he can rebound, he can defend, get to the rim and he’s very, very strong.”

Yet, it’s not just about the physical element of things with Simples. Although the pieces around him are plenty talented — Demetrius Lilley, Sam Brown and Jaylen Shippen among them — they are also inexperienced.

With those three, two sophomores and a freshman in Brown (the son of Sixers coach Brett Brown), making up the majority of the Aces’ starting lineup, there’s leadership that’s desperately needed from a veteran like Simples.

“I definitely [had to be that] at the start,” Simples said. “But these guys, like I said, are confident, and I really don’t have to do much as a leader. I just tell them things once in a while, but honestly, they know what to do.”

But whatever Simples has done is clearly working.

Lower Merion has now gone more than a month without a loss, taking care of business both in and out of the Central League since a 50-43 defeat at Haverford in its second game of the season.

And younger players like Lilley are gaining confidence. Although the sophomore’s 18-point performance may not have been as dominant as earlier outings (34 points and 19 rebounds against Upper Darby as well as 19 points and 21 rebounds vs. Garnet Valley), it was arguably more impressive.

The 6-foot-8 standout emphatically capped the Aces’ first quarter with a cutting dunk and corner triple on consecutive possessions, bringing the LM bench to its feet.

That gave the Aces more than enough momentum to seize control — with Lilley controlling the paint, they locked down defensively in the second quarter, holding Penncrest to two points on 0-of-14 shooting as a team.

“There’s a lot of confidence in the locker room,” Lilley said. “There’s no days off for us.”

Perhaps that’s also why Downer didn’t see this happening.

His team just finished off a stretch of four games in six days — all double-digit victories — and Lower Merion’s still got more business to take care of. The Aces visit Radnor Thursday night, then host district rival Harriton Saturday and cap January with a road trip to Garnet Valley.

But that wasn’t going to stop him from enjoying what can only be termed as a massive victory for Lower Merion.

With a stranglehold on first place in the District 1 Class 6A power rankings, and now their Central League destiny in their hands, the Aces have turned what many expected to be a rebuilding year into yet another impressive campaign for one of Pennsylvania’s perennial powerhouses.

“We’re very happy to be 12-1,” Downer said. “We have to stay humble, stay hungry. There’s a very good chance that the way our league is set up, we’ll see Penncrest again at some point, and it would be hard to play that well again.”

By Quarter
Lower Merion: 21 | 16 | 13 | 14 | 64

Penncrest:       11 |  2  | 13 | 14 | 40

Shooting
Lower Merion: 27-47 FG, 7-18 3PT, 3-4 FT

Penncrest: 14-53 FG, 4-23 3PT, 8-11 FT

Scoring
Lower Merion: Lilley 18, Simples 15, Brown 14, Gribbin 6, Chestnut 4, Poles 3, Rothman 2, Shippen 2

Penncrest: Tomlin 11, Boyer 10, Quinn 9, Stanton 6, Potts 4