City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The Grace O’Neill era is over at Archbishop Carroll.

After four years of running the Patriots’ offense, O’Neill’s already on her way to being a four-year starter at Drexel, where she just won CAA Rookie of the Week for the first time. That leaves Renie Shields needing to figure out who’s going to be at the point of attack for her offense for the first time in quite a while, one of a number of questions she’ll have to figure out if they want to better their Catholic League runner-up finish of a year ago.

Shields has no shortage of options to go to, her team quite guard-heavy; 6-foot-tall Army commit Taylor Wilson will be the de facto ‘5’ in the starting lineup, but Carroll’s going to have to rely on a group of pesky perimeter players to share doing…well, just about everything.

“We talk about, everybody’s a player, nobody’s a class year,” Shields said. “So when we ask you to step on the floor, we expect you to be ready to play that position, whatever that may be — and since we don’t have much height, everybody’s the same position, pretty much. We’re all guards, but we all have to contribute rebounding, defensively and offensively.”

Leading the attack will be junior guard Brooke Wilson, Taylor’s younger sister and a Division I recruit with a bunch of offers and talent to match, now a seasoned veteran in the PCL. Wilson’s a scoring lead guard, an excellent dribble-drive creator and finisher who’s working on her facilitating abilities. 

Like O’Neill four years before her, there’s a new freshman (with quite a hoops pedigree) who’s going to be in the mix as well. Alexis Eberz, whose parents Eric Eberz and Michelle (Thornton) Eberz both played at Villanova, is a day-one starter with a bright future ahead of her.

“(She’s) a different type of player [from O’Neill] but certainly has the same skill set. Alexis can really shoot the ball, Grace was more of a driver initially and became a really good shooter as she worked on it; I feel the same way about Alexis, she’s going to put the time in to be really good at driving, shooting, passing. And both of them have a really good mind for the game, which is really helpful.”

Senior guards Courtland Schumacher and Meg Sheridan will chip in, as well; Sheridan was a starter on last year’s squad, Schumacher first off the bench; now they should both be in the starting lineup. Neither are flashy, but both can knock down open shots, defend, rebound, and keep the offense moving.

Shields’ advice for that pair is simple: “Just do what they do well, nothing more, nothing less,” she said. “They’re very good defensively, they know how to play, they’re very unselfish and they’re willing to work with whatever we ask of them.”

Off the bench, the Patriots will utilize a group of sophomores including guards Olivia Nardi and Kate O’Neill, Grace’s younger sister, plus forward Brooke Olender, to chip in for some depth.

The Patriots’ season got underway Wednesday night, Wilson and Eberz splitting point guard duties against the Westtown School. Going up against a Moose squad that was taller, deeper, more athletic and talented than any they’ll face in the Catholic League, and playing in front of its home crowd — in a game played with a 30-second shot clock — were too many variables stacked against the Patriots, who took a 64-24 defeat in their opener.

It was a final score indicative only of the result of a team with players from N.J. and N.Y. and some of the best youngsters around going up against a local Catholic League school, and nothing more.

“You have to play the best to get the best out of your kids, and that team’s very good,” Shields said. “There’s no denying, you have five Division I players on that team — very young, but just play really hard because they have coaches that demand that. I just think our first game, we weren’t quite ready. Put that on me.”

Carroll’s girls, who also graduated Maggie Grant (Villanova), are not alone in having new roles to adjust to for the 2022-23 season, at least when it comes to the top of the Catholic League. Aside from Lansdale Catholic, which returns most of its talent and adds Abington transfer Jaida Helm to the mix, Cardinal O’Hara, Archbishop Wood and Neumann-Goretti all like Carrol have significant 2022 classes to replace. 

Who makes the biggest strides over the next 6-8 weeks, regardless of early-season results, is likely to be the favorite to hoist some hardware at the Palestra and beyond.

“That’s all it’s about, who can progress and develop quickly?” Shields said. “Those teams lost such critical elements to their team, that you now have to ask those kids that were in a smaller role to step up to a bigger role, and are they capable of doing that, and can coaches pull that out of them?

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Westtown School 64, Archbishop Carroll 24

Westtown coach Fran Burbidge admitted it was a bad time for Archbishop Carroll to visit. 

The Moose went down to Virginia last weekend to participate in the Art Turner Memorial Classic, where they lost to Paul VI (Va.) and then beat Georgetown Visitation (D.C.), Burbidge not thrilled with the overall hustle level he saw from his squad, saying “we went after it a little bit this week here” in practice. 

Burbidge’s girls responded with a swarming defensive showing against Carroll, which they held to 9-of-41 (21.9%) from the floor with 18 turnovers in the dominant victory.

“Carroll caught us at the wrong time,” Burbidge said. “They’re really, really a good team and they’re so well coached [...] they come into us and our kids played with a sense of urgency and heart, so it was a tough, tough matchup for them at this time.”

Westtown (3-1) got a balanced effort from up and down its lineup. Delaware commit Grace Sundbeck had 10 points, five rebounds and four assists; junior Zahara King had nine points, four assists, three rebounds and two steals; junior Savannah Curry had 11 points and three rebounds. 

Two eighth graders in Burbidge’s top seven, Jordyn Palmer and Jesse Moses, both showed why they’re getting significant varsity minutes: the 6-1 Palmer had 11 points, four rebounds, three blocks and three steals, while the 5-9 Moses had 10 points, two boards and two assists.

“Our young ones [...] they’re not blinking,” Burbidge said. “They’re basketball players, they love playing the game.They’re just really good basketball players, and so our job is to help them continue to grow and mature with that.”

By Quarter
Westtown: 16  |  19  |  18  |  11  ||  64
Carroll:       7   |   5   |   8   |   4   ||  24

Shooting
Westtown: 25-56 FG (5-22 3PT), 9-12 FT
Carroll: 9-41 FG (2-13 3PT), 4-6 FT 

Scoring
Westtown: Palmer 11, Curry 11, Sundback 10, Moses 10, King 9, Fitzpatrick 6, Olak 4, Langley 4

Carroll: T. Wilson 7, Eberz 7, Schumacher 3, Wilson 3, Sheridan 2, Archibald 2

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