City of Basketball Love

Ryan Coyle (@ryancoyle35)
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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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When you lose your entire starting lineup from the previous season, many teams would consider the following season a rebuild. When it comes to Upper Dublin’s girls basketball program, it is more of a reload.

Last year’s squad, under head coach Morgan Funsten, who is entering his 11th year leading the program, went 15-7 in the regular season, finishing in third place in the Suburban One Liberty Division and earning the 13th seed in the PIAA District 1 6A playoffs. The Cardinals went on to defeat Downingtown West in the opening round, but fell to Pennsbury in the second round. Funsten’s team rallied in the district playback round to qualify for the state playoffs for the ninth time during his ten year tenure as head coach.

Another extremely successful season for one of the premier girls teams in the area, but one that didn’t come without some challenges for the future.

“We had a four-point lead in the fourth quarter against Pennsbury in the second round of districts,” Funsten said. “Our leading scorer Amy Ngo suffered a pretty gruesome leg injury that required her to have leg surgery and miss the rest of the season and we wound up eventually losing that game.”

Ngo, who was a sophomore at the time of her injury, was one of the standout guards in the Suburban One during her first two years of high school hoops, recording 750 total points during her freshman and sophomore campaign. While the Cardinals will be without her for the beginning of the season while she continues to recover, there is optimism that she could be back towards the end of the season.

Other key pieces leaving the lineup that started a majority of the season for Upper Dublin last year were seniors Bliss Brenner, Geena Sarnoski and Colleen Klammer. Another standout sophomore guard from last season, Aditi Foster, who scored 12 points in the Cardinals’ first-round district playoff victory over Downingtown West, transferred to Penn Charter for this school year. 

So with so many key and integral pieces from a state playoff team not being available for the start of the 2022-23 season due to an injury, a transfer, and a few graduates, what should be expected of this new bunch for Funsten?

“The expectation here no matter the experience level is to always compete at a high-level and when you do that you put yourself in position to win a lot of basketball games,” Funsten said.

Despite the major turnover on the roster, there is optimism that is resonating throughout the Cardinals coaching staff and the players for this upcoming season.

One key piece that returns from last year's state tournament team is Alaina Sanders, who is going to be depended on for an increased role due to her experience at the varsity level. 

“I think my role on this team kind of started to transition at the end of the season when Amy got hurt,” Sanders said. “That was a moment that changed a lot of things for our team, because she is such a great player for us. But, the best thing about Amy is that she’s not only great for us on the court, but she’s great off the court as well and I have learned a lot from her. I learned a lot from her in terms of being a leader and learning what an increased role on this team looks like.”

Funsten is counting on Sanders to continue that transition from the end of last season and help him lead an inexperienced, but talented bunch both on and off the court. 

“She’s a great athlete and we are looking for her to step up and be a leader this year,” Funsten said. “She’s really solid on defense, a really good team player, but we are looking for her to have an increased offensive role this year.”

Other expected starters to the rotation will be two juniors who happen to be twins, Nora Brady and Brighid Brady. The sisters have shown major strides throughout the past year and seem ready to take on their new expanded roles. Funsten describes them as ‘absolute gym rats, who are always working on their game’. 

“We saw them from the end of last year to now really make some big improvements and strides in their game,” Funsten said. “I am really excited for them personally and also really excited about what they are going to be able to do for our team.”

Upper Dublin will also rely on two fresh faces to the program, a freshmen duo that is expected to be major contributors from day one. Megan Ngo, the younger sister of Amy who plays the guard spot like her older sister, and Colleen Besachio, a ‘versatile, do-it-all type of forward’ will be a key piece to the Cardinals success this season.

While so many new faces are in new places, expectations might not be as high as they always are surrounding the program. Last year though, there wasn’t much expected from the Cardinals coming into the year and they had another successful season yet again.

“I think we can really use last year as a good building block for some of our returners and also show it to some of our young players as encouragement and motivation that we can have similar success,” Sanders said. “Coming into last year, not many people viewed us as a potentially good team because we lost a lot of pieces from the year before and we still made it to the state playoffs. This year we have a lot of new pieces and new players again, so I think we can point to last season's success as an unproven team as encouragement that we can do it again.”

During Funsten’s time, he believes his program has developed the reputation of a good half-court team that does a lot of their damage in that setting and also sets the tone on the defensive end of the floor, converting defense into offense. This year's team, while it is a work in progress, might be a little more uptempo and have the ability to get up and down the floor to change things up at times.

As Funsten figures out his rotation, as well as the development speed of some of his younger players, he has learned this offseason that sometimes it is best to just take a step back and look at the big picture.

“As a coach, I have to realize that sometimes I need to take a step back and realize with the experience level of these girls, I can’t expect the same type of things in situations that I have had with some past teams,” Funsten said. “But over time, the goal is to get back to that level that we are accustomed to, but we know it might take a little time.”

As Sanders enters her senior season, with the most experienced out of any of the expected contributors for this years Cardinals squad, her and her teammates believe the coaching and leadership of Funsten and his staff will really help accelerate the process and allow this Cardinals team to be viewed as more of a reload, then a rebuild. 

“When you have great coaching and leadership, it can make a lot of difficult situations easier, especially when you have a young team,” Sanders said. 

While expectations from the outside might view this Upper Dublin team differently than in years past, the expectations within the locker room remain the same, keeping the tradition of excellence that has been put in place continuing to go in the upward direction. 

“I think getting back to the playoffs is always the goal for us,” Sanders said. “It’s hard to tell how far we can go, because this group is so new and we have to get into game action for real before we can determine how good we can be. But, like I said before, we have a lot of talent and great coaching and when you have that, as well as a group that plays hard and together you can accomplish a lot.”