City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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MALVERN — Keith Gee said he and fellow Penn Charter senior Mark Butler were talking in school on Tuesday when Butler brought something up about their game at Malvern Prep that afternoon.

“He was like, yeah, we never beat Malvern [at Malvern],” Gee said. “We were like ‘today’s the day.’”

Gee made sure of it. 

With the Quakers trying to hold off a surging Friars squad down the stretch and take control of the Inter-Ac, Gee’s corner 3-pointer with four minutes left was a massive shot as the Penn Charters came away with a 55-52 win.

Not only was it the first win at Malvern Prep for Penn Charter’s seniors — who lost at the Prep as freshmen and juniors, their sophomore matchup ruined by the COVID pandemic — it puts the Quakers (19-1, 4-0) in control in the Inter-Ac, a year after they shared it with the Friars (11-5, 3-1), a big step closer to their first solo league title since 2004.

And they aren’t settling for anything less than a perfect run through the six-team private school league, which has no postseason, the regular season deciding all titles. You tie with someone else, you share the league title, regardless of what happens during the regular season — head coach Dave Bass remembers all-too-well his senior year at Penn Charter, when losses to Malvern and Germantown Academy meant they had to split the title with an Episcopal squad they’d bested twice during the regular season.

Penn Charter’s five-man senior class, which all started on Tuesday due to sophomore guard Kai Shinholster’s absence (illness), has its eyes on 10-0, and nothing else.

“It would mean everything,” senior wing Isaiah Grimes said. “It’s our senior year, last year, this is something we’ve been looking forward to since freshman and sophomore year, going 1-9 [as freshmen], we knew something like this could happen, and now it’s happening. I don’t think we’re fazed by it, but more like this is our team, we’re ready for it.”

The Quakers looked like they might run away with it early, jumping out to a 21-8 lead after one quarter, the advantage reaching its maximum at 24-8 early in the second. Four different Quakers had hit 3-pointers by that point, PC going 8-of-12 from the field in the opening quarter.

“This was probably our best game, our best start of the year,” Bass said. “And it really came out of nowhere, to be honest with you. We were hitting shot after shot, and I tell them all the time that shooting is contagious. The shots came from several different people, which was a beautiful thing to see.

Isaiah Grimes (23) goes up for a layup while Malvern Prep defends. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

“The first quarter was huge was for us, because I knew they were going to chip away at some point.”

Chip away Malvern Prep did, winning the second quarter and the third, making it a 30-21 halftime score and 38-33 going into the fourth, getting within three points early in the final quarter. But Penn Charter responded, getting a couple quick buckets to extend the lead back to seven.

Gee, a 5-foot-11 guard, stepped up with the biggest shot of the night, breaking a two-quarter cold spell from deep with a 3-pointer to make it 47-39 with four minutes to play, side-stepping a defender in the corner in front of his bench, knocking down his only long ball of the night. 

“I was about to drive, but then I saw them cut me off, so I was like I’ve got to hit this shot,” he said. “I hit it, and it was just a dream come true.”

They weren’t done there; another bucket by Gee, one by Grimes, and put-back by senior Trey Shinholster helped Penn Charter build the lead back up to 10 with 70 seconds remaining, all but sealing it.

The Quakers didn’t help themselves by missing the front end of two one-and-ones in the final minute; Malvern Prep hit a few shots in the last 30 seconds to get within five, and one final layup at the buzzer for the final margin, but the outcome was never in doubt from that point.

“I just think the battles we’ve been through this year, we stayed the course, stayed resilient,” said Grimes, who finished with 11 points, eight rebounds, three steals and an assist. “And we knew we started off hot, that was a good cushion, but they were going to fight back and give us their best shot, and we were ready, and I think we did our job.”

Lafayette-bound point guard Mark Butler finished with 14 points to lead the Quakers, adding eight rebounds, four steals, three assists and a block in a terrific all-around performance. Gee, who's being recruited by D-II Chestnut Hill plus D-IIIs Widener and Arcadia, finished with nine points; sophomore Travien Bryson Jr. added seven and senior Colin Schumm chipped in five and five rebounds.

Bryson Jr. gave Penn Charter great minutes in the first half, hitting a 3-pointer and a floater, helping the Quakers out offensively on a night where they needed it; the younger Shinholster brother, a Division I recruit, has become one of their top scorers this season.

“He’s my Player of the Game, he was real big,” Grimes said of Bryson Jr, who goes by 'TJ.' “He does that in practice a lot [...] he was ready for it, and we were happy for him.”

Penn Charter has six games left to accomplish its mission, starting with a home game against archrival Germantown Academy on Friday, the last game of their first half of the league schedule. The Quakers still have to win at SCH Academy, EA and GA on the back half, not to mention the return visit from Malvern Prep (Feb. 7), and then they can celebrate that title and prepare for a run in the Pennsylvania Independent State Tournament.

All of that success comes after going through a coaching change just before the season, John Owens stepping down and Bass moving up from the middle school team, where he’s seamlessly taken over a group that didn’t graduate anybody from a year ago.

“They were developed as a young team, to get to this point,” Bass said. “I describe it as I was given a Porsche and I’ve got to put 94 gas in it.”

By Quarter
Penn Charter:  21  |   9   |   8   |  17  ||  55
Malvern Prep:   8   |  13  |  12  |  19  ||  52

Shooting
Penn Charter: 21-51 FG (5-18 3PT), 8-13 FT
Malvern Prep: 23-63 FG (3-17 3PT), 3-4 FT 

Scoring
Penn Charter: Mark Butler 14, Isaiah Grimes 11, Keith Gee 9, Trey Shinholster 9, Travien Bryson Jr. 7, Colin Schumm 5

Malvern Prep: Ryan Williams 18, Andrew Phillips 17, Ryan Pegg 5, Achilles Tucker-Turner 4, Tague Davis 4, Hayden Pegg 2, Charlie Oschell 2