City of Basketball Love

CoBL Staff (@hooplove215)
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ATLANTIC CITY — The 2023 grassroots season has come to an end, the girls’ edition of the Hoop Group Showcase League closing out its action with this weekend’s championships at the AC Convention Center. The four-day event went from Friday through Monday, starting with showcase games and pool play and then moving into bracket play as the tournament progressed.

Here’s the second part of our recruiting notebook from the four days of the event:

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More HGSL Championship Coverage: Day 1 Standouts | Day 2 + 3 Standouts, Pt. 1 | Day 2 + 3 Standouts, Pt. 2 | Day 4 Standouts | Championship Notebook | Recruiting Notebook Pt. 1 |

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Aidan Langley (2025 | BBA Elite 17U)

The last year has been one of major growth for Langley, who’s starting to see her hard work pay off in the form of attention from college coaches.

The Coatesville native transferred from her hometown school to Westtown this past year, joining a group that was one of the best girls’ prep programs in the country. Playing in a frontcourt that included 6-3 Michelle Olak, one year her senior, plus stud 6-1 eighth grader Jordyn Palmer, Langley overcame a preseason injury to become a valuable late-season reserve for the Moose, who won the FSL and PAISAA championships and earned an invite to the GEICO Nationals, one of just four girls’ teams so honored. 

“At Coatesville, I was definitely one of the better players there and I got to do more of what I wanted. At Westtown, everybody’s good, you really have to earn your spot,” she said. “I got hurt in the preseason so I didn’t really get to play, but watching them play and getting to play towards the end of the season, it shows that I really need to work hard, but it’s really fun to play with them.”

A 6-1 forward, Langley didn’t look fazed in the slightest playing in a Sunday showcase game against a Fairfax Stars squad which was deep and talented in the frontcourt, led by 6-3 Syracuse commit Keira Scott. She battled all game long in the post, putting up a 12-point, 12-rebound double-double, though Fairfax’s overall talent was too much for BBA Elite as a whole.

Langley had a couple second-chance buckets and maybe even a third-chancer, grabbing four offensive boards, each rebound battled for and earned. It’s that work ethic that led her to picking up her first Division I offer earlier this month, Temple head coach Diane Richardson and staff surprising Langley on a Zoom call with the scholarship opportunity.

“They said that it was impressive that I could run up and down the floor with no subs and that I was getting rebounds even though I looked tired,” she said. “I was very shocked, because that was my first offer. I wasn’t really expecting it, but I was really happy and I was really grateful that they gave me that opportunity.”

Langley, who’s only seen Temple’s basketball facility during a camp but is planning a visit to see the North Broad school’s whole campus, said she was also hearing from Albany, Binghamton, Wagner and Fairleigh Dickinson, though it wouldn’t be surprising if her weekend performance in AC had quite a few others reaching out. She isn’t planning on making a college pick anytime soon, saying it wouldn’t likely be until after her final season of grassroots hoops.

As for the next year of her basketball career, she’s working on “definitely my shooting,” she said. “I need to get consistent, and be more consistent throughout everything on the floor.” — Josh Verlin

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Kathryn O’Kane (2025 | Heat Hoops 16U)

In soccer, the player who fills the role of a 10 is usually considered their team’s most creative and influential player on the pitch.

If that sounds like a point guard in basketball, it should. Much like an effective soccer team will funnel the ball to their No. 10 and let them figure out the rest, a good basketball team gets the ball to the point guard and lets them go to work.

Having the ball, whether it be on her foot or in her hands, is a place that Kathyn O’Kane finds herself in quite a bit.

“I really wanted to work on taking control and being a leader,” O’Kane said on Saturday. “As the point guard, being more vocal, that’s definitely what I needed to work on. I can definitely always use more work on my overall game.”

O’Kane was really good in Heat Hoops’ win over the eventual 15U HGSL champion NJ Shoreshots in Saturday morning’s first set of games. She scored 12 of her 14 points in the second half, including go-ahead free throws with 1:26 left, had plenty of the ball and was a pestering presence on defense.

In the first half, Fiona Reckner had things going, getting into the lane and either scoring or finding a shooter, so O’Kane focused on defending. When the Shoreshots adjusted and the game got tight in the second half, the point guard became more aggressive.

“I love it,” O’Kane said. “That’s also why I know I have to continue to work on being vocal and a leader for my teams. I love being seen as a leader who can help my team out.”

At the moment, O’Kane is leaning toward basketball as the sport she wants to pursue at the next level. Still, her other sport is still plenty important and her goal is to be a four-year varsity player in both the fall and winter.

“Soccer really helps,” O’Kane said. “You’re always running in soccer, so it definitely helps my defensive game.”

While the high school basketball season is still a few months out, CR South looks to be one of the most interesting teams in the area. The Golden Hawks will have a new coach in Jesse Krasna and a wealth of talented returners who have been putting in work with their respective clubs this summer.

It’s similar on the soccer pitch in the fall, where she may be at the fulcrum of the Hawks’ front six in attack, but there’s firepower around her too.

Having so many teammates, whether it’s her Heat Hoops 16U teammates Recker and Lil Metrick or Lily Bross, Katie Purpura, Cam Gregory and any others able to fill a variety of roles, it’s not all on O’Kane to make something happen. 

“They like me being able to get to the basket,” O’Kane said. “I’m working on my outside shot, the three ball because last year I really liked to drive and kick, I wasn’t really shooting the three so that’s something I’m working on.” — Andrew Robinson

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Logan Langel (2026 | Syracuse Nets HGSL 15U)

Every Christmas Eve, the Langel family has a tradition.

They head to Colgate’s Cotterell Court and get some shots up.

That’s what you do when you’re a “basketball family”.

“It’s really cool,” Logan Langel said. “People say it’s just a game, but to me it’s really not. It’s really part of my life, which I really enjoy. … I think my parents would support me no matter what, but I definitely do love the game.”

Langel’s father Matt, a former Penn men’s basketball player, is the head men’s basketball coach at Colgate. Logan’s mother Tara (Twomey) Langel was also a former Quakers hooper.

Logan grew up around the game and had her mother as a coach on most of her youth basketball teams. Neither parent technically coaches her anymore, but she still appreciates having an extra pair of basketball minds to help her out when she gets home.

“It’s definitely a little bit of both (pressure and fun) but I like to take it as just motivation,” Logan said. “They have so much wisdom to share with me, which I love that they can both be my coaches off the court.”

After finishing up a run with the Syracuse Nets to the HGSL 15U semifinals in Atlantic City, Logan is readying for her third season of varsity basketball at Hamilton Central in her sophomore year.

The 5-foot-7 point guard started on varsity as both an eighth and ninth grader, averaging 10.4 ppg and 3.6 apg and knocking down 32 threes as a freshman this past winter. 

“Different things,” Langel said of the traits she got from her parents. “My mom’s speciality may have been more on defense because she was so small, so I think my defense has really improved having her coach me. And my dad, one of the biggest parts of his game was shooting, so he’s always in the gym with me shooting.”

Logan missed a third of her team’s season this winter when she broke her right arm early on. She said she came back an even stronger player.

“My ball handling got a lot better at the time and my finishing because that’s all I could do,” Logan said.

A strong student, Logan hopes to one day follow in her parents’ footsteps by playing college hoops at an Ivy League institution. That is a long way off, however, with three seasons of high school basketball and two seasons of grassroots hoops still ahead. The goal at the moment is to continue to improve as a player.

”Just to continue to grow mentally and as a basketball player, both are very important,” Logan said of her goals. — Owen McCue

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Alicia Newell (2024 | Fairfax Stars EYBL 17U)

The first thing that stands about Newell is that she’s fast. Not just a little quick, but fast fast. Sprinter fast. 

So it’s no surprise that track was her first love, basketball just “something she could do in her free time,” picking the sport up in middle school. 

“I just tried out, I was no good,” she said. “I hadn’t touched a basketball before seventh grade; I was terrible, but I was fast. Using my speed it was just, like, defense, get the ball, and then pass it — I couldn’t dribble, I was terrible. They didn’t have a track team at my old school, they just had basketball, so I said let me just try it, and I fell in love with it.”

Newell’s come quite a long way since then, now starting for an EYBL squad on the Fairfax Stars’ 17s, the speedy and talented 5-9 combo guard going off for 29 points in a win over Kiyomi McMiller and BBA Elite on Sunday morning. She showed off her shot-making ability, hitting 3-of-4 from downtown, while getting to the hoop in transition and in the half-court, finding open teammates and staying vocal on the floor.

“This weekend was really just to show college coaches what I can do and how far I’ve come throughout this whole process,” she said. “Over my EYBL years, the college coaches who have been watching me can definitely see the progress that I’ve made. So this last tournament I really just wanted to show them all I can and just pick up some of those offers, basically show the world what I can do.”

Newell said she has five Division I offers but didn’t want to mention names; she did say that she’ll be taking an official visit to Holy Cross in the near future, and was open to new schools — certainly a possibility after the way she played this weekend. 

A high-academic student at Elizabeth Seton (D.C.) High School, where she was a first-team all-WCAC selection as a junior, Newell already has her career path laid out for her beyond basketball. She wants to study biomechanics to help athletes of future generations achieve their peak physical output on the court, track, field, road, you name it.

“First I started off in kinesiology and I looked at all the different branches that go under that, and I saw biomechanics and it really hit me,” she said. “Track athletes, they have the blocks; we have shoes and insoles in basketball. It’s really just designing different equipment, it’s really cool.” — Josh Verlin

Abby Arnold (2025 | Comets Select 16U)

All Abby Arnold wanted to do when the ball came to her was be decisive.

In her first two seasons at Methacton, the guard knew most of her opportunities would come from a teammate getting into the paint and kicking the ball back to her for an open shot. Seems simple enough, but it’s not all that easy at game speed and with defenders flying out trying to disrupt that shot.

If a few of those do go in early? Then it just gets harder and harder to get the next one.

Hence Arnold’s quest to be a little more decisive and a little more of a variable.

“I wanted to work on catching and shooting, but also being ready to drive,” Arnold said. “I really wanted to be able to mix it up because if you have a good mix, then you’re unguardable.”

She had both aspects working on Saturday when her Comets Select team took down the SJ Titans’ 16U squad. In the first half, it was all catch-and-shoot while the second saw Arnold use that gravity to dip past a defender and go to the rim.

One of the main pillars of Villanova’s offense under Jay Wright was the philosophy of catching the ball ready to shoot. There’s never a moment where a shooter is more open than the second they catch a pass, so anyone who can use that to their advantage will get a lot of good looks.

It was something that Methacton coach Craig Kaminski stressed early with Arnold, knowing she had a quick release and a reliable form that could help stretch out a defense.

“That’s something my high school coach, Craig, helped with a lot,” Arnold said. “I played with really good players like Nicole (Timko) and Cass (Kropp) and they draw so much attention so when they kick out to you, you’re wide open.”

Again, it’s not as easy as simply catching the ball and shooting it. Arnold explained she’s worked at all the little things that go into it, like moving to a spot where she’ll be open but it’s also easy for a teammate to find her or being balanced when she gets to her spot.

“The catch-and-shoot has surprised me with the way they’ve been going in,” Arnold said. “If my point guard drives, I’m making sure I move to a space where it’s open. When the defense comes, I should be too far away so I’ve already shot by the time they get there.”

Arnold’s a gym rat, on top of a busy summer playing with a Comets squad that finished out with back-to-back bracket championships in Chicago and Atlantic City, she’s been a regular at Methacton’s summer league games and open gyms. With Timko and Tori Bockrath leaving in 2022 and Kropp and Mairi Smith graduating in June, the Warriors will have a different look this winter.

Even as a junior, Arnold will be a leader for Methacton and she knows some of the defensive attention her teammates earned the last few years will now turn to her. Much like the upperclassmen served as her guides when she was a freshman, Arnold is ready to return the favor.

“I want to mesh with my teammates,” Arnold said. “Even if they’re not new, they didn’t play a ton with me last year, so we’re building that connection so it's easier once we do start playing and we can just flow.

“Anything I can do, I will so we can be successful.”

Arnold said she’s starting to get a little buzz from colleges and has lined up a few elite camps to attend before the start of the high school season.

While she was the one making the shots this summer, Arnold made sure to point out all the passes, like the crisp dishes right into her hands from Giavanna Rogers and Catie Kelly on Saturday, that made it look so simple.

“They were passing to me when I was open and I was making the shots,” Arnold said. “It’s all them.” — Andrew Robinson

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