City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
––

It will be two years tomorrow, Wednesday, January 26, marking the anniversary of Kobe Bryant’s tragic death. Anytime someone walks into Lower Merion’s Kobe Bryant Gym you could feel his presence. His eyes are everywhere in wall portraits.

On Tuesday night, Kobe’s eyes may have been particularly pleased with the Aces’ Sam Wright. The 6-foot-2 junior is not a unicorn, like Bryant was, though a lot like Bryant in his constant pursuit to make himself better—a Kobe trademark.

Wright will be the first to admit he wasn’t very good when he first began playing basketball. He was more prone to be the kid who dribbled the ball off his leg than dribble by anyone. Through perseverance and time, Wright is playing a vital role on the traditional state powerhouse, as he did in the Aces’ 58-47 Central League victory over visiting Haverford High School.

With the victory, Lower Merion moved to 14-2 overall and 10-2 in the Central League, while feisty Haverford dropped 11-4 and 8-2.

Lower Merion’s Penn State-bound 6-9 senior Demetrius Lilley finished with a game-high 25 points, while Justin Poles chipped in with 11, offsetting Haverford’s balanced attack led by Tommy Wright and Googie Seidman’s 12 points each, and J.R. Newman’s 10.

Until the fourth quarter, Sam Wright had not scored at all, though with the game still in contention, his steal and layup gave the Aces a 41-34 lead with 4:06 to play, and Wright followed that up on Lower Merion’s next trip down the floor with a corner trey that gave the Aces firm command.

It’s kind of funny, a player making an impact in a big game, in a game that didn’t come that naturally to Wright when he first began playing.

“Basketball did not come naturally to me, I was the kid who would dribble the ball off his leg,” said Wright, laughing. “I was pretty afraid. I didn’t like having the ball, I made bad decisions. I really had to work on it to get to the level I am today.

“I used to wake up early before school, about 5:45 in the morning, and I would shoot sometimes with my brother before school. I started doing that freshman year. I liked to get shots up in the morning. It was brutal at the start. I didn’t adjust until about a month in.”

It’s been three years since Wright began morning shooting and his confidence and his shot have improved.

“I told the kids before the game that Haverford isn’t the type of team you knock out with one punch. It’s going to take a few punches, and (Haverford coach) Keith Heinerichs does a great job there,” Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer said. “We got down 10-2 early and then we fought back and played some good defense. We’ll certainly see them again.

“Sam’s confidence is growing, and we need third-party scoring, behind Demetrius and Sam Brown. We think Sam (Wright) is the one who could do it. We played good team defense and Sam is a sneaky athlete, who is a hard worker. Sam’s ready to play in the bright lights. He was very good against Radnor last week.”

Haverford started on fire, leading 10-2. Then, the second quarter, and the Fords couldn’t hit anything, not scoring until 4:18 into the second stanza. Meanwhile, Lilley was wreaking havoc, scoring all 10 of the Aces’ second-quarter points.

With 7:31 left in the game, the lights began to dim in the Kobe Bryant Gym when someone leaned against a dimmer. That’s about the time the lights went out on the Fords’ offense again, this time not scoring until 5:09 into the last quarter.

“We got off to a good start, and then in the second quarter, that’s the quarter we’ll question what we were doing when we look back at the tape,” said Heinerichs, who’s done a good job building the Haverford program. “If we won that second quarter, we would have been in better shape. We’re getting some people and having a seven-man rotation will help us a lot.”

Wright admits he still has more work to do. He’ll have more morning shoots ahead, and somewhere, you would like to think, Kobe Bryant is watching and smiling at the kid who used to dribble the ball off his leg—the kid who wants to perfect his game, like someone else once did who shot in that gym.

By Quarter

Haverford:   14 | 4 | 16 | 13 || 47
Lower Merion:  10 | 10 | 17 | 21 || 58

Scoring

Haverford: Tommy Wright 12, Googie Seidman 12, J.R. Newman 10, Nick Colucci 9, Colin Reynolds 4

Lower Merion: Demetrius Lilley 25, Justin Poles 11, Jaylen Shippen 9, Sam Wright 6, Peter Gribbin 4, Henry Bard 3

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.