City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Angelina Balcer’s first film session left her in tears. 

It was during her middle school years that the Plymouth Whitemarsh senior first sat down with her dad, Jesse Balcer, to go over some tape of her games. Not quite ready for the feedback that came from then then-head men’s coach at Chestnut Hill, even delivered a little more softly than he might have to his college hoopers, she didn't take it well.

“I didn’t understand it at first,” she said. “I couldn’t take criticism at all, I just started crying; I would take everything too personal and not use it to get me better, I would get afraid. But now I use (film) to get (myself) better and reflect on the court.”

Proof of the figurative distance Balcer has traveled came last week, after the Colonials’ point guard had had a string of sub-par games, and wanted to put a stop to it. So she hit up PW head coach Dan Dougherty, knowing exactly what she needed to get back on track.

“She came to me and said ‘Coach, can we watch film together? I’m in a slump, and I don’t know why,’” Dougherty recalled. “And we watched film, and she went out and had one of the best stat lines you’ll ever see against Hatboro.

“She’s the leader on the team of ‘you can coach me, Coach, I can take it when I make a mistake, I’m not going to pout,’” he continued. “‘Yes coach, that’s what I’ve got to do’ [...] and a lot of that I think has to do with her father being a coach, 100%.”

The 5-foot-3 senior guard was a reserve last year on the Colonials’ perfect team, getting some reserve minutes as PW won the Suburban One, District 1 6A and PIAA 6A championships, never losing a single game, one of the most impressive local high school hoops seasons in recent memory. 

Now she’s a major part of their success this season, showing her value as a defensive ace and distributor who can also pop in a bucket or two during the Colonials’ 33-29 win over Upper Dublin on Tuesday night. 

Balcer didn’t quite put up the numbers she did against Hatboro on Friday, when she went off for 12 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and five steals in her best high school varsity game. She finished Tuesday night with five points, three steals and three assists, but most importantly played a large role in defending UD’s standout freshman guard, Megan Ngo, who’s like Balcer a speedy 5-3 guard who can cause all sorts of problems if not corralled.

Ngo finished with nine points and six rebounds, but was largely held in check by Balcer after scoring the game’s first five points. She was able to stay step-with-step with Ngo whether her mark had the ball in her hands or not, making sure she didn’t work free for many 3-point attempts or get clearance around screens.

Balcer (above, right) helped guard Ngo (12), a talented freshman guard for Upper Dublin. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

“She did a good job,” Dougherty said of Balcer. “They, in a sense, are like mirror images of each other, they are energizer bunnies, they never get tired.”

Guarding top guards isn’t anything new for Balcer, who’s had to go against currently Holy Cross freshman Kaitlyn Flanagan — one of three of last year’s seniors in attendance — in practice the last couple years, honing her defensive skills against a point guard good enough to be a freshman year starter at one of the best mid-major programs in the Northeast.

“I really focused on her in practice,” Balcer said, “I would guard her and see everything she did and use it to help me, not bring me down, just take that and help me get better.”

“The practices that we had the last three years were so good,” Dougherty said. “Our scout team could have finished in the top 24 in the district, it was that good.”

Balcer’s defense helped set the tone for a low-scoring affair, which tends to be the case when these two Suburban One League (Liberty Division) rivals meet on the hardwood. Plymouth Whitemarsh (6-1, 3-1) entered the fourth quarter trailing 27-24 but closed strong, holding Upper Dublin (3-2, 2-1) without a field goal in the final quarter.

Penn commit Abby Sharpe came up with seven straight points, including a go-ahead 3-pointer with 4:54 remaining that was the game’s final made shot. 

“She’s trying to, as strange as it sounds for someone who’s played as much basketball as her, she’s trying to learn score-and-situation, of when’s it okay to shoot five seconds into a possession, and when should you wait 30 seconds into a possession,” Dougherty said. “That’s something kids don’t get over the summer, it’s just run-and-gun and if you win, great, if you lose, (you’ve) got four games left this weekend, it’s no big deal. 

“Games out here, every one matters, so she’s trying to learn that score and situation concept, and she’s getting better with it.”

Following Sharpe’s bucket, PW forced a turnover and then held the ball for nearly four minutes, getting the clock under a minute before UD finally fouled enough to send them to the line; Sharpe and freshman AJ Avery each split a pair at the line in the final minute for the Colonials’ final points.

That was just enough to overcome a strong effort by a young Upper Dublin lineup that starts two standout freshman in Ngo and forward Colleen Besachio, a 5-11 forward who had 11 points, 12 rebounds, three blocks and two assists, making three 3-pointers on the evening.

Erin Daley, who along with Sharpe is all that remains of last year’s PW starting lineup, finished with a team-high 14 points and seven rebounds (four offensive), making a couple second-quarter 3-pointers and scoring all six of PW’s third-quarter points. Balcer’s five points came on a steal-and-score in the first quarter and another in the second, which resulted in a three-point play.

The win was PW’s fourth straight since losing to Abington on Dec. 8, and they have one more SOL game — at Wissahickon on Thursday — before playing three games in the Diamond State Classic in Delaware from Dec. 27-29.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure on us right now because of last year’s team and everything, so I think stepping up tonight really showed that we’re still here,” Balcer said. “We’re still PW, we can still do big things like this.”

Balcer’s already got her college plans settled: she’ll be playing both basketball and soccer at Chestnut Hill. She was first recruited for hoops, but after a standout season on the soccer pitch, where she plays attack and midfield, she was recruited by the school’s soccer coach, and decided to play both, the potential overlap short enough that she thinks she can make it work.

It’s perhaps not a surprising choice: Jesse Balcer is no longer the basketball coach at Chestnut Hill, but serves as the Division II school’s Director of Athletics. But, Angelina insists, that’s not why she’s going there.

“A lot of people assume that I’m just going there just because my dad’s there, but there’s a lot of other things that go along with it,” she said. “I didn’t go about it as following in his footsteps, I kind of went with my heart and what I wanted to do, and I didn’t really listen to my parents’ opinions.”

By Quarter
PW:   9   |   9   |   6   |   9   ||  33
UD:   8   |   9   |  10  |   2   ||  29

Shooting
PW: 12-41 FG (4-12 3PT), 5-7 FT
UD: 13-33 FG (5-16 3PT, 2-2 FT

Scoring
PW: Daley 14, Sharpe 11, Balcer 5, Avery 3
UD: Besachio 11, M. Ngo 9, B. Brady 5, Sanders 2, N. Brady 2