City of Basketball Love

Kevin Cooney (@KevinCooney)
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As Ahmad Nowell stood outside the Imhotep Charter makeshift locker room just off the cafeteria at Archbishop Wood on Saturday night, the members of the Mount St. Joseph’s Gaels were walking down the hallway towards their buses in the parking lot.

Nowell—a sophomore point guard for the Panthers—looked fresh as can be with hardly a drop of sweat anywhere on him. The Gaels, meanwhile, had the look of a team that had just been put through the wringer.

“That was our plan in the second half,” Nowell said. “We wanted to control the tempo. We wanted to come out aggressive and it gave us the lead.”

It gave them more than the lead. Nowell scored 19 points as part of a strong three-player attack with Rahmir Barno (14 points) and Justin Edwards (20 points) as the Panthers pulled away for an 82-66 victory in the fourth game of the five contest Diane Mosco Foundation Shootout in Warminster.

What Nowell did was show how powerful this Imhotep team can be with him on board with Barno and Edwards. When the fourth quarter came around on Saturday night, Nowell looked completely comfortable running the point and getting the Panthers in the right spot. 

“It’s just communication out there,” Nowell said. “We’re good friends and we make a plan before a game on what we need to do. And then, we find a way to go out there and do it.”

And this wasn’t against just another team—Mount St. Joseph’s entered the game at 8-0 from the Baltimore area and seemed to be one of the best teams in America. Their best player, Bryson Tucker, has played for USA Basketball and is one of the leading sophomores in the country. 

And Imhotep just wore them out like a guy who had his speed on the treadmill at the gym surge unexpectedly, the Gaels unable to really stop it at any point when the thing got moving.

Nowell (0) and Rahmir Barno (1) form one of the top guard tandems in Southeastern Pa. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

“We felt like that we can morph to whatever the opponent is,” Imhotep head coach Andre Noble said. “We watched them a lot of film and we felt they came in slow and methodical. Coach (Pat) Clatchey is a great coach and they have 30 plays. So we felt like we had to push the tempo and at halftime, we felt that our pressure was going to make a big difference.  And our guard play was really good tonight.”

Imhotep already has played Reading and Salesianum on their non-conference schedule. They have a game against Roman Catholic just after the New Year. These are the games that will ultimately tell more about whether the Panthers can make the long ride to Hershey in March to win a state title. The thing is: They know that better than anyone and they seem to relish it.

“Most of our out-of-conference games are against really good players,” Nowell said. “It forces you to come in with the right mindset, play defense and make sure everything is working well offensively. That’s really good for us.”

“We want to challenge ourselves,” Noble said. “If you lose by 30, you learn. If you win by 30, great. But you want to challenge them and keep improving.”

The best part of what you see with the Panthers right now is the unselfishness that was pretty evident on Saturday night. Nowell joined the program this year after being away for a season, but his relationship with Barno and Edwards already has formed a pretty good bond and a cohesive unit on the floor.

“We’ve known each other and being friends off the floor really does play an impact on what is taking place on the floor,” Nowell said.

The Philadelphia native spent his freshman year of high school basketball at Houston High School (Tenn.), though he played this summer with the NJ Scholars' 15U squad. He entered his first season in the Philadelphia Public League with offers from Auburn, Kansas and Memphis all under his belt from the offseason, though there's a long way to go until his college years.

“(Nowell) is a phenomenal kid,” Noble said. “I’m not talking as a basketball player. I’m talking as a kid. He’s one of the leaders on this team. He’s a hard worker on this team with tremendous character. There hasn’t been any issue putting him into it.

"You sometimes worry about it and how someone else could impact the chemistry, but we have a great group of guys. They all are pulling together to help each other out. Even if we don’t win, I love teams like this. I’m super blessed to have these guys.”