City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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The flashes come in waves. They’re explosive, powerful, and impactful. And then, for a spell, they leave. Trent Middleton knows it, too. MCS coach Lonnie Diggs implores his star 6-foot-3 senior guard to shoot more, go to the basket more, be more aggressive.

The times Middleton does that, he’s impressive. The times he doesn’t, he disappears.

On Thursday night, in the last game of the calendar year, Middleton hopefully built himself a template that he grabs and holds on to, leading the Mighty Elephants to a comfortable 68-54 victory over rival Constitution with a team-high 16 points in a Philadelphia Public League A Division game.

The MCS victory gives the Mighty Elephants a 6-1 overall record an unblemished 3-0 league start, while Constitution fell to 3-4 overall and 0-1 in the league, despite matching game-high 17-point performances from Lamar “Microwave” Glover and Jacob Beccles.

“As a team, with the national schedule we play, we need to get back to the lab and come out with more energy,” said Middleton, who is getting interest from Stetson (Fla.), East Stroudsburg, Holy Family and Delaware State. “My coaches tell me all of the time that the sky is the limit for me, and to be more aggressive. Coach Diggs gets on me about shooting more, and almost every play, he tells me to take it to the basket.”

It’s something Middleton sees himself doing more often in 2022.

It’s something Diggs expects of him. Though not just Middleton, his whole team. The MCS coach was satisfied the Mighty Elephants won. He just wasn’t that pleased with how they won.

“This is a rivalry game and it’s always a tough game between us, but we didn’t play well and we didn’t have a great effort,” Diggs said. “We haven’t played in two weeks, and maybe that had something to do with it. Trent is a senior and one of our leaders. He wants to take the big shots in tough times.

“In a year, I’ve seen become more of a leader and he’s become more of a scorer when we want him to be. He hasn’t received any concrete offers, so there is something Trent is definitely playing for. What bothers me is that I’ve seen us at our best, and we’re a lot better than we were tonight. I’m still happy we won.”

MCS led 30-19 at halftime, and had control of the game by then.

What started as a close game began to turn midway through the second quarter. It’s when MCS’s superior size began making a difference, along with the emergence of Middleton. He had been held scoreless in the first quarter and didn’t drop his first points until there was 7:05 left in the half.

At the fourth lead change, the Mighty Elephants went ahead 14-13 and rode a 16-5 run into halftime. Middleton was responsible for half of that, while Constitution struggled from the floor, hitting 6 of 25 from the floor and turning the ball over 10 times.

After shooting 2 of 10 as a team in the first quarter, the Mighty Elephants faired quite a bit better in the second frame, downing 9 of 15 shots and turning the ball over just once.

Beccles kept them in close, nailing a couple of treys. Otherwise, Constitution couldn’t generate much else.

Just when it looked like it was going to be an easy night, Glover exploded for his game total of 17 in the third quarter, scoring almost as much by himself as his team did in the first half.

Glover’s three-point play with 3:09 left in the third quarter pulled the Generals to within 38-34, but MCS responded with a 15-2 tear to seize control of the game again in the fourth quarter. Six of the Mighty Elephants’ 15 came from Middleton.

“Lamar showed up 30 minutes before tipoff and might not have been mentally ready and it shows in the game,” said Constitution coach Rob Moore, whose team committed 20 turnovers. “We had too many turnovers, and Lamar is really on, like he was in Las Vegas, or he’s not. Lamar had to get going, and they forced our guys (Glover and Beccles) to do too much.

“We just turned the ball over too much. You can’t win that many games when you make that many mistakes.”

Constitution did break through to within 57-48 with 3:48 left to play on a Beccles’ three-point play off a slam. But the Mighty Elephants went on a 7-0 run to close out Constitution.

“I could have done a better job shooting the ball in the first half,” said Glover, who is getting attention from Arcadia and was shutout in the first half. “After the third quarter, I was exhausted. We need to put a lot of work in, because we have Imhotep next Tuesday. We need to execute better.”

By Quarter

MCS:             9  |  21  |  17  |  21  ||  68

Constitution:  8  |  11  |  17  |  18  ||  54

Scoring

MCS: Trent Middleton 16, Chauncey Presley 13, Khalif Crawley 12, Aasim Burton 11, Jaheim Bethea 5, Niare Poplar 5, Isaiah Griffin 4, Hadir Boswell 2

Constitution: Lamar Glover 17, Jacob Beccles 17, Jamal Carr 10, Simere Blagman 8, Kervin Similien 1, Nasser Coleman 1

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.