City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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WEST GOSHEN — They were counted out. They started the season 0-3. They were 3-7 after their first 10 games. They knew the history against them. They knew the history on this specific court against them.

They felt like they had the world against them.

It didn’t matter.

Each time, the West Chester Rustin Golden Knights got knocked down this season, they defiantly got back up and pushed back.

In one of the most dramatic games this season, featuring 10 fourth-quarter lead changes, No. 12-seed West Chester Rustin upset No. 4-seed West Chester East, 55-52, Wednesday night in the PIAA District 1 Class 5A quarterfinals at East.

It marked the first time Rustin (13-12) beat East since February 2019 and Rustin's first win over East at East’s Jack “Shug” Byrne Gym since January 2014.

More importantly, the Golden Knights clinched a state PIAA Class 5A playoff berth and now advance to the PIAA District 1 Class 5A semifinals to play No. 1 seed Radnor on Saturday, while East (16-8) will play in the playback round against Marple Newtown at East on Saturday.

Rustin’s Ian Schlesinger led all scorers with 23 points, supported by Tyler Giunta’s 16, offsetting KJ Cochran’s 16 and Stanley Porter’s 10 for East.

“East has been dominant over us, so it’s been at least (four) years since we last beat East,” said Golden Knights’ coach Vince Mostardi, who’s in his second season. “We were counted out all year. We’re an underdog in a lot of people’s eyes, but in that locker room, there is no one who is an underdog.

“Those guys are a bunch of dogs in there. They’ll take anybody on. There was no way we were going to lose this game tonight. This is a different type of Rustin than you’ve seen before. This senior group are among the toughest guys that I’ve ever seen.

“We said from the beginning to handle their crowd, handle adversity. That’s exactly what we did. We took a punch and were able to punch back. I’m so proud of these guys I can’t even put it into words. East has experienced big things before. It’s Rustin’s time to take over. We’re not backing down from anybody. We don’t care where you’re from, what you’re record is, we’re coming with fire. We’re not done.”

The largest separation between the two teams was six points, with East holding a 34-28 lead with 6:00 left in the third quarter. It’s when Giunta answered with a basket. When score was locked up at 40-40 with 49 seconds left in the third, it’s when sweet-shooting lefty Schlesinger rose up and dropped his fifth three-point shot of the game.

It was Chase Hatton, and Matt Nochumson, and Ryan Jaross, and Jake Crispino, and Sam Sproull getting out and playing stifling defense for the Golden Knights.

When the fourth quarter arrived, neither team budged. East’s Cochran would make an amazing play, like his steal-and-slam with 3:31 to play, which gave the Vikings a 50-49 lead. Then Giunta answered for Rustin. East’s seldom-used Porter was a force in the middle, scoring 10 points, six in the fourth quarter, and blocking five shots.

But it was Nochumson, on a perfect set up by Giunta, that provided the game-winning points with 45 seconds to play, and it was Nochumson who managed to reach out and knocked the ball to Schlesinger with 9 seconds left on an inbounds play intended for Cochran.

The Golden Knights hopped on the loose ball and Giunta clinched it.

“I knew they were going to try and get KJ the ball and I jumped the inbounds pass, and got the steal,” Nochumson said. “Honestly, this whole team in general, with the coaches and players, we expected to get here. Even though we didn’t have a great record, we knew we could compete. We’re a No.12 seed and we didn’t care. We knew what we could do.”

Giunta stressed there were no doubts.

“On the last play, Matt tipped the pass and Ian got the ball and passed it to me, and I wasn’t going to miss those free throws,” he said. “We started slow, but we know we can beat any team. With us, East may have more talent than us, but we play as a team. We’ve reached our goal—the state playoffs.”

Schlesinger is getting Division III attention and from some Penn State branches. He may have increased his value with some college recruiters after the game tape on Wednesday night.

“We’re seniors and this is our year. I think we were hungrier than them,” Schlesinger said. “East has been busting us for four years and to beat East here in their home court, nothing beats this. They may have played a little out of character to get (Jack) Kushner his 1,000th point. Our focus was to stop him and make their other people beat us.”

Needing two points, Kushner did reach the 1,000-point plateau on a pair of free throws with 7:09 left in the third quarter.

“I hate it, I’m beating myself up over this,” said Cochran, who was phenomenal at times. “Credit to Rustin. They were hungrier than us. Ian is a great shooter and they’re good players. We wanted to get Jack his 1,000 and we knew Jack wanted it and we wanted to get him that early, so we can get Jack going and getting everyone else going.

“We’ll watch film and pay more attention to the details. We’ve lost three straight and we have to get it together, because if we don’t, it could be our last game.”

By Quarter

West Chester Rustin (13-12):  10  | 16  |  17  | 12 ||  55

West Chester East (16-8):  10   | 18  |  12  |  12 ||  52

Scoring

West Chester Rustin: Ian Schlesinger 23, Tyler Giunta 16, Matt Nochumson 4, Jake Crispino 4, Sam Sproull 3, Ryan Jaross 3, Chase Hatton 2.

West Chester East: KJ Cochran 16, Stanley Porter 10, Jack Gallagher 8, Jack Kushner 6, Ryan Price 6, Josh Sherlock 4, Jose Ramos 2.

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Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.