City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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Erik Henrysen kept seeing things he didn’t like. The Central Bucks East coach felt something hollow about his team’s 8-1 start. There was no cohesion. It was a rather clunky 8-1, devoid of any team play.

That all came to fruition when the Patriots were smoked earlier this season by Bensalem. So, Henrysen pulled his team out onto the court the first practice after that loss and told his team everyone would be held accountable. If you messed up a play, you were sidelined.

It was a tough-love moment that has blossomed into Central Bucks East’s second-straight Suburban One League Colonial Division championship, after the Pats did away with pesky North Penn Thursday night, 51-43.

The Pats become the first repeat title winners in over 15 years at CB East, to Henrysen’s recollection. They’ll share the league this year with district rival CB South, who equalled their 11-5 league record, splitting a pair of games between the pair.

With the victory, the Pats moved to 15-7 overall and 11-5 in the league, while North Penn fell to 11-11 and 8-8, making it very difficult for the Knights — ranked No. 24 in the District 1 6A rankings, the final qualifying spot, heading into the night — to possibly play in the postseason.

Ten different players scored for the Pats, led by senior Tyriq Toney-Bailey’s 11 points and sophomore Jake Cummiskey’s nine. North Penn’s Terhan Wright led all scorers with a game-high 15, followed by 10 points apiece from Norman Gee and Joe Larkins.

What got the Patriots here was simple: Teamwork.

“We’re deep this year and it’s why we are as good as we are,” said Toney-Bailey, who scored all 11 in the first quarter. “The whole team plays well together, and coach Henrysen likes to preach about being selfless. We were on a four-game losing streak and it’s what we had to do to get on this streak.

“This is what our goal was—but we’re not done yet.”

Henrysen allowed his team to celebrate as repeat league champions, though he stressed there is a lot more season to play and lots more ahead to play for.

“We have no signs of stopping right now,” Cummiskey said. “We bought into team basketball, and we started well, but there was a lot of one-on-one, and we’ve been sharing the ball more. This is 100-percent different than we were a month ago.”

After the Bensalem loss, Henrysen and Cummiskey had a talk. Jake stressed to Henrysen about coaching hard and the team had a conversation about playing unselfish basketball. The team went 8-1, which hid bad habits. Henrysen himself held himself accountable for what he should have seen.

“We got back to the basics where it was important to play for one another,” Henrysen said. “It’s been awhile since CB East won back-to-back titles. I’ve been here 12 years and we won in 2014. We had talent coming back, and there were other guys we didn’t know whether or not if they would take that step.

“We have 10 guys we know that can score. We took our foot off the gas in the end and credit to North Penn, they were fighting for their lives. We would have liked to have made a couple more foul shots in the end, but North Penn just coming and coming.”

North Penn led once, 2-0, then CB East went on a 12-0 run and it looked like the Patriots would run away with it. It took CB East 6:40 to reach the 20-point mark. It took North Penn 15:22, and it was reflective of the 38-20 halftime score.

CB East led by as much as 38-13 with 3:11 to play in the first half. Then, it seemed, the Pats settled in and relaxed. North Penn pulled the ball out in the fourth quarter, not scoring a point from the floor and not scoring at all until there was 2:11 remaining.

By then, North Penn had climbed to within 48-41. That’s the closest the Knights came.

“I thought we lacked defensive intensity in the first half,” North Penn coach John Conrad said. “I’m proud of the resiliency. The kids fought back when their backs were against the wall. We don’t know the playoff picture yet, but this didn’t help. We’ll know Sunday morning.”

By Quarter

Central Bucks East: 23 | 15 | 8 | 5 || 51

North Penn: 9 | 11 | 10 | 13 || 43

Scoring

Central Bucks East: Tyriq Toney-Bailey 11, Jake Cummiskey 9, Kyle Berndt 6, Joshua Lyzinski 5, Brett Young 5, Nick Rivera 4, Joey Giordano 4, Liam Cummiskey 3, Ryan Lenahan 2, Aidan Weaver 2

North Penn: Terhan Wright 15, Norman Gee 10, Joe Larkins 10, Mario Sgro 6, Ryan Deininger 2

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.

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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