City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Amir Williams is quickly making a name for himself. 

Not as a high-flying dunker, though the Neumann-Goretti junior wing is certainly capable of that. It’s as a 3-point shooter — and a clutch one at that.

After West Catholic forced overtime in a Catholic League semifinal, Williams’ back-to-back clutch 3-pointers helped Neumann-Goretti continue its Palestra magic and advance to yet another PCL championship with a 69-56 win.

Williams finished with 17 points, hitting five 3-pointers — two in the first quarter as N-G raced out to a big lead, another in the third quarter once the game was nip-and-tuck, and the first two buckets of overtime, helping Neumann-Goretti close strong.

“I’ve been confident in my shot, it’s just, it’s starting to show now,” Williams said. “It’s starting to drop more.”

For the 6-foot-6 junior wing, the big shots continued a season which has seen him hit the game-winning 3-pointer in overtime of the ‘Iolani Classic in Hawai’i in December, his 35 3-pointers on the season coming into the game second-best on the team. 

“He’s been really getting better, he’s really been trending upwards lately and starting to figure things out,” Neumann-Goretti coach Carl Arrigale said. “Some guys are born with it figured out [...] Amir, it’s been a trend, he’s been trending up.”

Sultan Adewale led the way with an 18-point, 12-rebound double-double, adding five blocks as the Saints’ senior forward was a two-way force. Robert Wright III chipped in 15 points, 10 rebounds and six assists and Bruce Smith added 10 more for the Saints, who are in the Catholic League championship game for the 18th time under Arrigale, who’s been at the South Philly institution since 1999.

In Monday’s championship game, Neumann-Goretti will face Roman Catholic, which won the first semifinal, 66-59 over Archbishop Wood. 

In a matchup that came down to a single missed foul shot with 0.0 seconds on the clock during the regular season, the postseason rematch couldn’t be limited to 32 minutes after Neumann-Goretti couldn’t close it out in regulation, going 1-of-6 from the foul line down the stretch.

Amyr Walker played hero for West Catholic at the end of the fourth quarter, crashing the weak-side glass, his put-back layup just beating the buzzer to force four extra minutes and bringing pandemonium to the Palestra. 

But the overtime period was all Neumann-Goretti, which took advantage of the fact that West Catholic starting point guard Adam ‘Budd’ Clark fouled out in the final minute of regulation.

Williams hit the back-breakers, a pair of 3’s from the corner across from his bench to put the Saints up six with 2:30 to play. A 3-point play by Adewale and another layup from Myers had the league’s regular-season champs up 63-54 with under two minutes left in the extra session, then forced an empty West Catholic possession before Myers split a pair at the line to put them up 10. 

Wright III added a few more foul shots in the closing minute for the game’s final margin.

That West Catholic even came back to force overtime seemed highly unlikely as the fourth quarter progressed.

Neumann-Goretti clamped down defensively after a Zion Stanford jumper for West Catholic opened the fourth to tie the game at 44. The Saints scored seven unanswered over the next five-plus minutes, until Stanford hit a couple foul shots with 2:13 remaining. 

Trailing by four with a minute left, Stanford hit a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to cut it to a one-point game. Khaafiq Myers answered with a single foul shot, making it a 52-50 game with 13 seconds to play, setting up Walker’s game-tying bucket.

Instead of hanging their heads going to overtime, Neumann-Goretti kept it together and finished strong, denying West Catholic the chance to play for its first league title since 1959, the Burrs in the semifinals in consecutive years for the first time in program history.

"We just told them we were in good shape," Arrigale said. "What are you going to say? That isn’t the time to start yelling at them and brow-beating them. It was just 'we’ll be fine, we’re in good shape.'

"We knew they were without Budd, we just had to get the lead and get control of the game. 'We’ll be fine, forget about what happened and write a new chapter,' more or less."

Stanford, the Temple-bound wing, finished with 23 points and 12 rebounds, while Clark and Shemar Wilbanks-Acqui added 12 each for West Catholic, whose season will continue in the District 12 3A championship game next week, and then in the state tournament.

Roman and Neumann-Goretti’s matchup in the championship will be the fifth time that Arrigale and Chris McNesby go head-to-head in the PCL title game. They’ve split the first four; Arrigale’s Saints won it in 2009 and 2010 behind Tyreek Duren & Co.; McNesby got them back in 2015 and 2016, led by Tony Carr, Nazeek Bostick and Lamar Stevens. Arrigale also got a win over Roman in the 2020 title game, but that was during Matt Griffin’s tenure.

Though it’s become an almost-annual appearance at the Palestra for Neumann-Goretti — “I know our fans think it’s on the schedule but it’s not, I can tell you it’s not,” he joked — the fact that he’s been to the league championship game now a dozen and a half times isn’t something that passes Arrigale by without a moment of contemplation.

“It’s hard to get here, and the fact that we’ve been here that many times, I’m proud of it,” he said, “but it’s always more fun when you win it, so we’ll see what happens on Monday.”

By Quarter
Neumann-Goretti: 22  |  10  |  12  |   8   |  17  ||  69
West Catholic:      17  |   9   |  16  |  10  |   4   ||  56

Shooting
Neumann-Goretti: 25-54 FG (7-19 3PT), 12-24 FT
West Catholic: 22-65 FG (2-17 3PT), 10-14 FT

Scoring
Neumann-Goretti: Sultan Adewale 18, Amir Williams 17, Robert Wright III 15, Bruce smith 10, Khaafiq Myers 9
West Catholic: Zion Stanford 23, Shemar Wilbanks-Acqui 12, Budd Clark 12, Amyr Walker 9

Neumann-Goretti junior guard Robert Wright III, left, drives on West Catholic's MJ Branker. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)