City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
—

WEST CHESTER — This time, there was no breakdown in the fourth quarter, as there had been at times this season. This time, no one got tense. This time, they put their foot on the gas.

This time, West Chester Henderson did all of the things that Warriors’ first-year coach Jason Ritter wanted to see—and at the right time.

For only the third time in Henderson history, the Warriors will be playing in the PIAA state playoffs. The first time was in 1977, the second in 2007 and now this season.

The No. 17-seed Warriors were looking for better seeding Tuesday night, when they hosted No. 21-seed Haverford High School for the chance to be the No. 9 seed coming out of District 1 Class 6A.

Henderson, behind K’Mari Smith’s game-high 23 points, Connor Fleet’s 20 and Danny Surowiec’s stifling defense, will get that opportunity after a 61-44 victory over the stubborn Fords.

Henderson (16-10) will play at No. 11 Coatesville, which split with the Warriors during the Ches-Mont League regular season, on Friday at 7 p.m. to determine the No. 9 and 10th seed out of District 1, while Haverford (14-12) will play at No. 7 Perkiomen Valley on Friday at 7 p.m. to determine and 11th and 12th seeds.

According to Ritter, Henderson has never won a state playoff game.

“This is my first year here and the kids bought in, we played a very difficult schedule and this is what I came in and wanted to do,” said Ritter, who stressed that this team’s success would not have been possible without his staff: Briheem Adger, Desmond Alston, Tyrone Richardson and Justin Ritter, his nephew. “The kids responded and are ready for these types of moments. Our bench prepares our starters for these kinds of moments.”

What was especially important to Ritter was that his team closed. The Warriors were up by 18 in the fourth quarter during their 79-73 upset over No. 9-seed Methacton last Friday in playbacks, and almost blew it.

“Sometimes, our team plays the scoreboard and not the other team, that was the message at the end of the third quarter (against Haverford),” Ritter  said. “We’ve blown leads and failed to close, and that’s on me, not putting my foot on the gas in timeouts, not pressing them hard enough to make better decisions, so I take all of those blown leads on me.”

The Warriors could be a tough out. Ritter has managed to piece together athletes with basketball players and put together a team. Surowiec, for example, a 6-foot-4, 210-pound junior, is headed to West Point to play baseball. Evan McFadden is a 6-6 stellar lacrosse player heading to nationally ranked St. Joe’s, and Smith, Fleet and Nyle Ralph-Beyer make up the basketball portion of the rotation.

They all know their roles.

Especially Surowiec, who did a great job against Haverford’s Googie Seidman, holding the sweet-shooting senior to 13 points on 5 of 16 shooting, with some considerable help from his teammates. Everywhere Seidman was, Surowiec was.

“Googie is tough, and this was a team effort chasing him off the line and being there when he curled,” Surowiec said. “I didn’t mind getting physical. I take pride in defense. I like playing defense. It’s fun for me. Defense is an attitude, and getting in someone’s head and throwing them off their game is something I take pride in.

“There may have been a hip check here and there,” he added with a laugh. “My job was to make sure he wasn’t getting on the spots that he likes.”

Smith had one of his best games of the season—and part of that is going against Surowiec every day in practice. Smith made 9 of 10 shots, and the Warriors, as a team, were 8 of 9 shooting in the third quarter to pull away.

“They are big and they bullied a little inside, and we didn’t do a good enough job on our switches,” Haverford coach Keith Heinerichs said. “They’re a good basketball team and they played harder for longer stretches than we did tonight. I thought our second quarter, when we battled, is something I liked. We just didn’t execute the game plan defensively in the third quarter. We just have to get back to the fundamentals and playing hard.”

Haverford held a 21-20 lead at halftime, when the Warriors caught fire shooting and surged ahead, 37-28, with 3:15 left in the third quarter. A Henderson 9-2 run at the outset of the fourth quarter put the Warriors in control—buoyed mostly by Fleet driving to the basket.   

And gave them a template in closing games that they can certainly use moving forward.

“We’ve had a lot of issues closing, and we had Methacton, we led them by 18 in the fourth quarter and they came back,” Smith said. “It’s something we worked on. We’re working on closing out games and finishing. We have the states ahead and we’re looking to get that first (state) playoff win.”

By Quarter
Haverford:    4   |  17  |  11  |  12  ||  44
Henderson: 14  |   6   |  21  |  20  ||  61

Scoring
Haverford: Brian Weiner 13, Googie Seidman 13, Gorman Bright 9, Tom Wright 6, Kevin Gannon 2, Keith Heinerichs 1.

Henderson: K’Mari Smith 23, Connor Fleet 20, Danny Surowiec 7, Nyle Ralph-Beyer 7, Ryan McFadden 2, Jesse Smith 2.

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.