City of Basketball Love

Ryan Coyle (@RyanCoyle35)
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In a heavyweight boxing match, it isn’t always who lands the first punch. Rather, it is who lands the most punches, and then gets the final knockout blow.

On Friday night, Roman Catholic delivered the first punch to St. Joe’s Prep, but the Hawks delivered the final hit, as well as every one in between. 

Roman jumped out to an early lead, knocking down its first few shot attempts, and at around the six minute mark of the first quarter, Prep head coach Jason Harrigan called timeout. Prep responded with a run of its own, and never looked back.

“Coach told us before the game that we had to throw the first punch,” Prep junior center Tristan Guillote said. “But, they came out strong and we didn’t throw that first punch and he let us know. I think that kind of woke us up and after they went on that little run to start, we woke up and did what we did the rest of the night.”

After the first two minutes of the first quarter, Prep outscored Roman by 22 the rest of the way en route to a 70-52 victory over the visiting Cahillites, improving its record to 16-5 overall and 9-3 in PCL play.

It was senior night in Kelly Fieldhouse, with the Hawks honoring their lone senior JP Hayden, as well as the two team managers. Hayden’s teammates and coaches goal was to make the senior night one to remember against a Roman team that came into the night at 18-2 overall and 9-1 in the PCL, a record good enough for second in the league behind Neumann-Goretti. 

“It was senior night, so we wanted to make a memorable night for our one senior we have on the team,” Harrigan said. “We have two seniors who are managers as well, and all our guys have a lot of respect for our seniors so it was important to get it done for them. Anytime you get a chance to play Roman Catholic, especially at home it is a big night. With how good the league is and how much is at stake every night, it was a really good win for us.”

After starting out in a man-to-man defense, the Hawks quickly shifted to a zone defense throwing several different looks at the Cahillites with the intention of limiting their access to the paint and slowing down the transition that the Roman backcourt of Xzyavier Brown, Jermai Stewart-Herring, and Erik Oliver-Bush have been thriving in all year. 

“(Brown) is one of the best players in the league, if not the best,” Harrigan said. “He is a tremendous point guard and we know he wants to go out and play in transition, get into the paint, and find others. So, coming in we knew we had to stop that. 

“We had two great days of practice leading up to this, working on specifically keeping him out of the paint and keep them from getting out into transition. I think our guys executed really well.”

That defense limited Roman to 20-of-48 shooting from the field, including holding Brown, a St. Joe’s commit, to only 9 points, with five of those coming in garbage time. Friday night was only the fourth game that Roman was held below 60 points in PCL play.

After dropping a matchup on Monday night Archbishop Wood in overtime, 77-63, Prep knew it had no time to sulk over the loss, as the Hawks had a golden opportunity to get a statement win on Friday night. 

“It meant a lot to knock off Roman tonight,” said Guillouette, who finished with 10 points in the victory. “We had a tough loss on Monday night, but these past few days there was a different level of intensity at practice that ultimately prepared us for tonight. A lot of people doubted us tonight, didn’t think we could win, but everyone bought into the common idea of winning and we got it done.”

In the victory, the Hawks shot above 50% in every quarter, including a first half that saw them go up 35-23, shooting 15-of-25 from the field (60%) and knock down five shots from beyond the arc. Sophomore guard Olin Chamberlain Jr. had eight of his 15 points in the first half and went 3-of-4 from 3-point range.

“I think it is great the way we have been playing and I think we are really hitting our stride right now,” Chamberlain said. “A lot of things are going in the right direction for us, we have a lot of guys stepping up, a lot of guys making shots and that makes our job easy as guards knowing when we pass the ball our teammates are going to knock it down.”

Chamberlain, along with fellow sophomore backcourt mate Jaron McKie, combined for 29 points in the win and are really seeing the benefits of the wars they went through last year during their freshman campaign, come to fruition down the stretch. 

“Definitely the experience has helped guide us through this season,” McKie said. “The amount of games we have played over these last two years has gotten us ready for any situation in front of us.” 

With only one senior on the roster, who isn’t part of the main rotation, everyone else who receives significant minutes for the Hawks with Chamberlain, McKie, Guillouette, Jalen Harper, Jordan Ellerbee and Matt Gorman are all either sophomores or juniors. With the success they have seen this year, including a potential top four finish in the PCL regular season, the Prep has no more time to be the young team on the block. 

This time of year, coaches love to use the adage that experienced freshmen are basically sophomores, sophomores are juniors, etc. With the trials of tribulations of a basketball season, it doesn’t matter how old your players are, if they have experience playing in competitive games like the PCL brings every night the youth excuse goes out the window.

With the achievements they have had throughout the regular season thus far, there will be pressure to perform in the playoffs. 

“Today when we were talking before the game, during the scouting report I told them ‘you know you're not young anymore, you all are juniors and seniors at this point’,” Harrigan said. “We are into February now and they have played a lot of games, so there isn’t that claim that they are young anymore and I told them that. I think they have all the experience that they need up to this point to play well in games like this. I think tonight we saw it all come together at the right time.”

McKie, who started off slow, missing his first three shots, found his groove scoring five points in the second quarter and hit a few big shots in the third quarter as well, helping push Prep’s lead to 46-32 with 3:07 left to go in the third. Everytime it looked like the grizzled veterans that are Roman Catholic appeared to be gaining some momentum, the Hawks always had an answer. 

Knocking off a team like Roman gives the Prep that little extra confidence boost they might have needed as they gear up for a playoff run, after struggling last season due to their inexperience and youth en route to a 6-12 record overall and a 2-11 record in the PCL, poor enough to get them a 12th place finish out of 14 teams in the Catholic League. 

“It is huge for our group confidence wise to know we can beat one of the top teams in the country like we did tonight if we run into them again in the playoffs,” McKie, who also contributed eight rebounds, said. “We knew that coming in they are one of the top teams in our conference, so we had the opportunity to go out there and make a statement tonight and that is what we did.”

The only Cahillite who benefited from the Prep zone defensive adjustment was senior forward Anthony Finkley who had a team-high 15 points, knocking down three of the teams’ seven made three-pointers.

In the fourth quarter there were two plays that put the finishing touches on the impressive victory. First, was the assortment of dribble moves into a stepback jumper that McKie knocked down and got fouled on at the 5:15 mark of the fourth quarter that sent the gym into a frenzy and had several of the Prep football players in the building running across the baseline in awe. 

The other was Harper (17 points) with a dunk off of a press break, where he slammed it home and proceeded to do a pull up on the rim to deliver that last punch in the boxing match and knock out Roman for good.

With Archbishop Ryan (9-3 PCL) and Archbishop Wood (8-4 PCL) both losing on Friday night, St. Joe’s Prep moves to to 9-3 in PCL play and with the head-to-head victory over Archbishop Ryan, the Hawks move to third place in the PCL with one game remaining at Cardinal O’Hara on Sunday. The Hawks also inch closer to a potential berth in the PIAA 6A state playoffs with a victory on Friday as well, though PCL playoffs results will also factor heavily into how that shakes out between Wood, Prep and Roman for the two spots in the PIAA/District 12 field.

While the Hawks put together a masterclass of a performance and were able to give their seniors a night to remember, the attention is only on the future with their goals all lying ahead of them still. 

“This is definitely a big win for us as a program, but we have bigger stuff ahead of us so we can’t get too high on this win,” Guilloutte added. “We just have to keep working and moving forward, trying to get as many wins as possible and allowing us to move on through the playoffs.”

By Quarter
SJP:       18  |  17  |  17  |  18  ||  70
Roman:  13  |  10  |  17  |  12  ||  52

Shooting
SJP: 28-47 FG (7-18 3PT) 7-11 FT
Roman: 20-48 FG (7-21 3PT), 5-9 FT 

Scoring
SJP: Harper 17, Chamberlain 15, McKie 14, Guillouette 10, Ellerbee 7, Gorman 7

Roman: Finkley 15, Jackson 10, Brown 9, Cotrell 7, Stewart-Herring 6, Oliver-Bush 5