City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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WARMINSTER — The only "easy" day is game day.

That's the idea West Catholic's boys' basketball team has thrived on in what's been a breakout year for the Burrs in the Philadelphia Catholic League. For about two hours every day they don't have a game, the Burrs head into their gym and just go at it - mainly working on defense and getting a lot of running in - so that when it is time to suit up and play against someone else, it's easier than anything else they've done that week.

West Catholic added another marquee result to its rapidly growing resume on Friday, using that defense to stumble defending champion Archbishop Wood in a 74-64 decision.

"We're always going to play hard defense," Shemar Wilbanks-Acqui said. "The offense is going to come with that. We don't always have to worry about sets. If we play hard defense, turn the ball over and get our transition going, we're cool with that."

So walking into the defending league champion's gym was a big accomplishment, right?

"I mean, I guess it was a big win for the program. We probably hadn't beaten them for a while," junior guard Adam "Budd" Clark said. "But we knew coming into this game we could win, so it's not like it's a surprise to us.

Friday's win left the Burrs as just one of two teams remaining with a single loss in the PCL standings along with Roman Catholic, the only team that beat West Catholic during the league schedule. Now 17-3 overall and 11-1 in league, West Catholic has made "the leap" on the surface level and figures to be one of the favorites to make one, if not two, trips to the Palestra later this month.

Certainly, the PCL playoffs are a different beast, but compared to what the Burrs put themselves through at practice, it probably won't feel that much different. Wilbanks-Acqui, who scored 15 off the bench and was a wrecking ball at the back end of the Burrs' 1-2-2 press, said the team devotes about an hour-and-a-half of its two-hour practices to defense and conditioning.

"If you love to play defense, then everything else comes from that," Wilbanks-Acqui said.

This wasn't an overnight deal. Burrs coach Miguel Bocachica had to bring his team up to potential, but as he's quick to point out, it also helped his players started growing once they got to West Catholic, too.

At 5-foot-9, Clark is the only rotation player under 6-3, but he's just as disruptive as the rest of them and when the Burrs do break out their press, it gets pretty tricky trying to figure out how to get the ball up the floor against them. The seemingly endless limbs of twins Kaseem and Kareem Watson and Nasir Griffin gave Wood a lot of issues, with the Vikings turning the ball over north of 17 times

"We try to simulate harder situations than the ones they'll face in games and I think that's helped us. Being as deep as we are and having some young guys who can play, a lot of times practices are harder than a lot of the games," Bocachica said. "They love the games more than the practices because it gets pretty competitive and fiery.

"The reason we're winning these games is a testament to what we're doing in our own gym when it's just us in there, nobody's in the crowd, (media) isn't coming to watch and it's just the kids."

Clark finished with a game-high 20 points, many of them coming on some dazzling drives to the rim where the guard hung, contorted and all but willed the ball up and in around Wood's taller defenders. After trading punches with the Vikings all game, the Burrs followed Clark's lead to deliver the knockout blow on a 14-6 run that bridged the end of the third quarter into the fourth, with the junior scoring eight of the points and assisting two more.

"I just wanted to make the right plays," Clark said. "I saw the open area and just took it."

It was Clark's three at the first quarter horn that put the Burrs up 14-12, but neither team could open much separation until West Catholic finally broke out its full court defense late in the second quarter. Normally, it's the defense the Burrs open up in, but Bocachica noted the tough slate his team has played this week, including non-league tilts on the road with Imhotep Charter and West Philadelphia High School where "it felt like the whole of West Philly was in the gym," as reasons he wanted to save it for the right moment.

Now his players, who do all that running in practice so they can make the pressure defense - or "12" in the Burrs' lexicon - such a disruptive force, naturally wanted to break it out as soon as possible. Athletes and coach compromised and every time West Catholic started to press, good things seemed to follow including the game-changing run between the third and fourth frames.

"Today it was like, do I start with the '12' or hold [it] in my pocket? Of course, they're all saying '12, 12, 12,' so when we pulled it out, we were able to get some deflections, get some steals and easy baskets," Bocachica said. "It took me forever to get them to understand they're tall. Most of them grew in the program. They didn't come in tall but now they have that understanding, you see how it changes the game. I think we average about 30 deflections a game."

Wilbanks-Acqui noted that Wood's Justin Moore was the one player the Burrs felt could handle their press and the Vikings senior had his moments with 18 points and nine assists, but even he fell victim to a few ill-fated passes right to the swarming defenders on the back end of the 1-2-2.

Just because the postseason is around the corner, don't think practice will overtake game day as West Catholic's "easy" day any time soon.

"We don't get tired," Wilbanks-Acqui said. "We're all in it together, we talk together, we communicate together, we got five people playing for the same goal."

By Quarter

West Catholic: 14 | 17 | 22 | 21 || 74
Archbishop Wood: 12 | 17 | 18 | 17 || 64

Scoring

WC: Adam "Budd" Clark 20, Zion Stanford 16, Shemar Wilbanks-Acqui 15, Kaseem Watson 13, Kareem Watson 5, Nasir Griffin 5

AW: Justin Moore 18, Carson Howard 15, Mike Knouse 12, Bahsil Laster 10, Tyson Allen 6, Jahlil Bethea 3