City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2022-23 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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West Chester Rustin girls basketball coach Lauren Stackhouse has a plan should her team lose focus this season.

She will hold up two fingers.

Two: The number of points that separated the Golden Knights in their two season-ending losses last season. 

Twice Rustin was one basket away from keeping its season alive. Instead a banner campaign finished with an unsatisfying feeling.

“I joked with the girls that any time we started to lose focus I would hold up two fingers and just remind them how bad that stung at the end, losing two close games to two great teams obviously in Spring-Ford and Methacton,” Stackhouse said. “Just taking that and using it as fuel to get us going and get our momentum this season. I don’t know about the girls but I felt that loss for probably six months after and I’m ready to make up for it in the upcoming season.”

West Chester Rustin's Laine McGurk, above, averaged more than 21 points per game last season. (Photo: Jack Verdeur/CoBL)

Stackhouse’s players don’t need many reminders. The majority of last season’s group is back with that same feeling of unfinished business. Second team All-Ches-Mont League selection Laney Costin is the lone starter who graduated. 

“I think we knew what talent we had and that we could go far, but our season sadly ended short,” senior Laine McGurk said. “We really want to take what we lost last year and put it into this year.”

The Golden Knights will lean on McGurk, a Drexel commit and the 2021-22 Ches-Mont League American Division Player of the Year. McGurk averaged 21.7 points per game and totaled 34 assists, 45 steals and 20 blocks during a 20-6 campaign for Rustin. 

McGurk will be re-joined by senior Elizabeth McGurk (her twin sister) and junior Riley Stackhouse — both All-Ches-Mont Honorable Mentions last season — and senior Lola Flynn in the starting lineup. Seniors Ava Panetta and Raelyn Loper are two more upperclassmen returning from last season’s rotation.

“I think we’re going to be even stronger this year since we have a core four of players returning from last year, so we’re just going to build off what we worked on last year,” Laine McGurk said.

“We just play really well together, so we kind of know what we’re doing,” Elizabeth McGurk said. “We’re going to do a lot of the same stuff as last year, but just try to improve on it.”

Laine McGurk will be looked upon to lead the offensive charge but her head coach says this group has a lot of other weapons built into their offense. 

The Golden Knights don’t have a lot of size, but the athletic group has a lot of multi-sport athletes who hope to use their athleticism to combat any mismatches throughout the season.

“I think we take a lot of pride in how athletic we are,” Elizabeth McGurk said. “Most of our players play a lot of different sports. We’re just really quick and athletic and I think that makes us a very versatile team.” 

West Chester Rustin's Elizabeth McGurk was an all-league honorable mention selection last season. (Photo: Jack Verdeur/CoBL)

The Golden Knights finished the regular season at 18-6 last season with an unblemished 10-0 record in the Ches-Mont American Division. They took down Bishop Shanahan then squeaked by Downingtown East for the team’s first league title in nine years.

Rustin earned the No. 6 seed in the Class 6A tournament — the program’s highest seed in the district postseason since earning the No. 2 seed in the Class 5A bracket before a semifinal run in 2018.

Then came an abrupt end when eventual District 1-6A runner-up Spring-Ford upset the Golden Knights, 48-46, in their opener after a first-round bye and third-seeded Methacton ended their season with a 45-43 loss in the playback bracket.

The Golden Knights’ group of seniors won their District 1 openers in both 2020 and 2021 before last season’s early exit. The goal this season is to grab another Ches-Mont League championship before making a deeper run into districts and breaking into the state playoffs for the first time.

“It’s all of our motivation for this year,” Elizabeth McGurk said. “We want to make it further. We’ve really never made it further than we did last year, so we really want to make it actually into the postseason this year.”

“I think we’re all really excited,” Laine McGurk said. “We want to do our best to use this last year to go as far as we possibly can and to make a really big impact just because it’s our last year. We know what we have to work with.”

Stackhouse is in her fourth year with this group of seniors. They’ve been to the District 1 postseason in three straight years and have combined for a 47-19 overall record and 28-4 league record in three seasons together.

She also feels a responsibility to help this group to even larger heights this season.

“I came in with this group as freshmen, and I’m kind of holding myself to a certain expectation with them in the sense that I want this for them probably more than they want it for themselves because I feel like this is my group,” Lauren Stackhosue said. “They deserve it. They’re such a great group of kids and I’m excited to see how it plays out.”

“It’s really going to come down to how much they want it,” she added. “We have the pieces. We have the horses. The sky’s the limit. If they want to think long term, I keep telling them, ‘You’ve gotta practice like that. You’ve gotta have that mentality.’ But it’s going to start in the preseason. It’s going to start in practice. It’s those things that are going to help us in the long run.”

West Chester Rustin fourth-year coach Lauren Stackhouse, center, coaches her team at the CoBL Classic. (Photo: Jack Verdeur)