City of Basketball Love

Sean McBryan (@SeanMcBryan)
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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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Central Bucks South boys basketball has a new head coach this season and it’s not under the dire circumstances that typically accompany a change-of-coach situation.

Louie Ditri was hired in the summer to become the Titans next head coach after Jason Campbell resigned to be able to watch his son play at Upper Moreland. 

Campbell, who ended up accepting an assistant coaching position with the Bears, didn’t leave due to a struggling team in Warrington and Ditri won’t fill in as an inexperienced coach.

The longtime assistant Ditri inherits a CB South team that finished 15-9 last season and returns 6-6 senior forward Tyler Meinel, an all-division choice the past two seasons.

“I’ve been at [CB South] the last 18 years as an assistant,” Ditri said. “So I’ve been in the school since it opened. I’m definitely familiar with everything.”

Before that, Ditri coached in the girls program at Conwell-Egan but had been friends with Campbell who applied for a teaching position at the newly opened CB South in 2005. Campbell was asked if he wanted to apply for the boys basketball head coaching position and obliged. He then brought Ditri aboard.

“You know, he was just trying to get a teaching job,” Ditri said. “We were 25 years old at the time. They hired him and he brought me up with him.”

Many aspects of the job won’t be new for Ditri: the building, the parents, the kids. Although he knows everything won’t be the same as being an assistant and wants to make some system changes of his own.

“Offensively, we’re going to push the pace, get up the floor,” Ditri said. “I think we have a very fast team so I want to be a transition team. That’s a different philosophy from years past. But also in years past we had more size and more of a post-up player.”

This season’s team has more length and speed than in years past so the new skipper wants to implement a full-court pressure approach on the defensive side.

Another challenge will be the turnover of coaching staff — only one returning assistant —  and players — seven graduated seniors including first-team all-division Michael Farley (Ursinus) and honorable mention selections Jay Macalindong and Joe Rooney.

Chris Granito returns as the starting shooting guard and was elected as one of three captains. He suffered a preseason injury and will be out the first few games, but Ditri described him as the heart of the team and someone the Titans will rely on.

Senior point guard and captain Flynn Carroll is another returning varsity player who will see a spike in responsibility after backing up Macalindong last year. 

Meinel played well as a second option behind the 6-7 Farley last season averaging 11 points, over seven rebounds and a steal per game; he won’t take anyone by surprise this season as the first player teams will game plan to stop.

“He can score, rebound,” Ditri said. “Somebody who jumps the lane to get steals, a decent shot-blocker. He’ll be the focal point for other schools when they game plan against us.”

A slew of JV players will be moving up to varsity to fill out the roster; they will have to learn on the fly to keep pace in the Suburban One Colonial Division in which the Titans finished atop with an 11-5 record, identical to Central Bucks East.

The Titans face a non-conference slate of Perkiomen Valley, Penn Wood, Malvern Prep, Neshaminy, Council Rock North, Council Rock South, Bensalem, Harry S. Truman, and Pennsbury along with the rest of its Colonial Division schedule of North Penn, Souderton, CB West, and Pennridge.

“That’s the challenge for us early on: We are playing some foreign competition,” Ditri said. “Even some of our non-league games this year are schools we never played ever or haven’t played in years. So that’s a little bit of the unknown. At least in our division, you kind of know everybody. You’ve dealt with them enough times that you know it’s going to be a dogfight.”

CB South lost to Plymouth Whitemarsh 73-68 in the first round of the District 1 Class 6A tournament last year. The Colonials went on to finish fifth and qualify for states.

The Titans aim to win their first district game since 2019 and shoot for their first PIAA appearance since 2013 as Ditri slides a seat down on the bench.