City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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The reminders of what could happen were all over the place—recent and far away. Just last week, the Archbishop Carroll girls’ basketball team played its worst game at the worst moment, losing to Cardinal O’Hara in the Catholic League championship.

Last year at this time, the Patriots suffered an opening-round PIAA Class 6A playoff setback to Nazareth ending their season.

On Tuesday night, Carroll, the top 6A seed from District 12, hosted District 1 No. 11 seed Neshaminy in the opening round of the 6A state playoffs and for over six minutes, the old haunts of playoff games past came creeping back.

In Carroll’s first five possessions, the Patriots missed their first seven shots, including hitting a ceiling vent, turned the ball over four times and looked disjointed. One Grace O’Neill 3-pointer with 1:31 left in the first quarter got Carroll moving towards a dominant 53-25 victory over young Neshaminy (19-9).

Carroll (19-5) advances to the second round of the state playoffs to meet Cedar Cliff (26-1) on Friday at a site and time to be determined, while Neshaminy, despite a strong game from 5-foot-10 sophomore Reese Zemitis, who scored 10, saw its season end.

While it took some time for the Carroll offense to warm up, the Pats’ Villanova-bound senior Maggie Grant shouldered the load early on. She scored 11 of her 13 points in the second quarter when the game was still competitive. If Grant can continue shooting throughout the state playoffs the way she did against Neshaminy, Carroll will become that much tougher to eliminate.

The stain is faded from Carroll’s 55-30 loss to O’Hara in the Catholic League championship on February 28, but it doesn’t mean that it’s gone away.

“We gave ourselves a day or two to soak that in and feel sorry for ourselves, but after that, we now know we a chance to win the state title and we’re focusing in on that,” said Grant, who’s the niece of Villanova coach Denise Dillon and may possess a better shot than her aunt when she starred at O’Hara. “I had a good feeling tonight when I released the ball that it was going in. I worked on my shot. Earlier in the season, my shot was a little flat. I worked on getting that arc with hours in the gym.

“Winning this game was a good start. We lost to Nazareth last year and that was something we talked about before the game. It wasn’t going to happen this time.”

Carroll trailed Neshaminy once, 3-0, on a Zemitis three-pointer and proceeded to go 6 minutes, 29 seconds without scoring a point. When O’Neill opened the flood gates, the Pats scored the next 12 points and the closest Neshaminy came to Carroll 19-15.

“Maggie can really shoot the ball and Maggie can sometimes be a little bashful,” Carroll coach Renie Shields said. “Tonight, Maggie wasn’t bashful and it’s something we need from her all of the time. This was a nice first step. We did not play well last week and we had to own it.

“The girls knew they were better than how they played, but give O’Hara credit. We spoke about it and we decided to move forward. We lost to Nazareth last year and we were young last year. This year we’re more polished.”

It’s shown all season.

Carroll never gets rattled.

“We had a rough first couple of minutes sitting on zero for a long time,” said the Drexel-bound O’Neill. “The state playoffs are a new start for us, and our coaches told us to move on from the O’Hara loss and that’s the attitude moving forward.

“Maggie is an awesome shooter and I was happy to see her pull us together when we were in a scoring drought and continue scoring for us. Moving forward, we need to play our game.”

The Pats’ game received a big whack from Zemitis. She scored all 10 of her points in the first half, before Carroll’s press started changing the tenor of the game.

Neshaminy started three juniors; Zemitis, a sophomore with offers from St. Joe’s and Drexel already; and a senior.

“We got off to a good start and we started with a match-up zone, which we’ve been working on,” Neshaminy coach John Gallagher said. “Maggie Grant hit us for three threes from the baseline, where she likes to shoot. We just couldn’t get out there fast enough.

“Carroll moves the ball extremely well and in the second half, Grace O’Neill took over. She was a little on her heels in the first half and that’s not a shot at her. The Grace O’Neill I know showed up in the second half. Reese has a big upside, and I have to do a better job of getting Reese open.”

Carroll moves on.

Hopefully, exorcizing the ghosts of playoffs past.

By Quarter
Neshaminy:    3   |  14  |   3   |   5   ||  25
Arch. Carroll:  7   |  15  |  17  |  14  ||  53

Scoring

Neshaminy: Reese Zemitis 10, Taylor Gurysh 6, Lola Ibarrondo 4, Mimi Smith 3, Maya Lewis 2

Archbishop Carroll: Grace O’Neill 16, Taylor Wilson 15, Maggie Grant 13, Kate O’Neill 3, Meg Sheridan 2, Brooke Hippert 2, Chloe Beckley 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.