City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2023-24 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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John ‘Tootie’ Allen couldn’t be much happier. 

The Coatesville native and proud 2001 graduate of Coatesville Area High School has had basketball take him a lot of places. He’s gone from Coatesville to Seton Hall to a European professional career, then back to the Philadelphia area to work mostly in administration, getting some referee work on the side.

After serving as the athletics director at Collegium Charter for four years (2017-21), Allen came back to his alma mater last spring. He was hired to provide some stability to a program that had gone through three head coaches in four years, resulting in a tumultuous 2021-22 which saw them miss the district playoffs entirely.

Allen did more than just that: in one year, he turned Coatesville back into a contender. The Raiders went 14-8 in the regular season and ended the season hot, winning six straight games in district playbacks and the PIAA Class 6A tournament to make it all the way to the final eight in states. 

Now the push is on to back that up with an even bigger 2023-24. The pressure isn’t getting to the program’s second-leading all-time leading scorer. Quite the opposite.

“I’m having so much fun with it,” said Allen, whose 2,372 points were beaten only by current La Salle point guard Jhamir ‘Jig’ Brickus. “I’ve touched every spot that I can touch — as a player, as a referee, and now as a coach, high-school wise — and this is probably the most fun that I’ve had.”

Brickus led the last great Coatesville team, which made it to the semifinals of the state tournament in 2019 before losing to eventual champs Kennedy Catholic. This group wants to go further. 

Allen, who won a state title as a senior 23 years ago, knows exactly what it takes. 

“It’s easy to motivate them,” he said. “It’s easy to say we’ve been to the (quarterfinals), but we need to get further. We’ve been one of the top teams, we’ve been second-best in the Ches-Mont, so we need to get further. 

“So [I tell them] instead of getting up at 7 o’clock and sprinting a mile around the track, I need you to get up at six and sprint two miles. And the kids are like, okay, if that’s what we need to do, we’ll do it.”

Allen has to compensate for the loss of two senior guards, Jeremiah Marshall (Alvernia) and Christian Proctor. He gave a lot of credit to that pair for helping drive Coatesville kids to come to workouts, saying how the numbers went from “six or seven” in his first few workouts to regularly hitting 30 or 35 participants this fall, sometimes more.

It helps that there’s a lot left in the tank. 

Allen returns four starters in senior guards Dior Kennedy (6-3) and Zuri Harris (5-11), junior guard Amon Fowlkes (6-1) and sophomore forward Larry Brown (6-7). It was a group that had to develop some chemistry on the fly last year: Brown a freshman thrown right into the mix, Harris having transferred in from O’Hara a month before the season started, Fowlkes arriving from Collegium Charter.

They took a few lumps in the early going. There were losses to Lower Merion, Downingtown West, Chester and Garnet Valley in various showcase games, to Shanahan, West Chester East and Henderson in league play. 

“The highs and lows weren’t really expected,” Harris said. “Now, this year we’re preparing for the hard times whether it’s a loss or an upset, we have to stay level, and when we win, never get too high, because we did that during the season, too.”

Now they’re a much more well-developed unit. Kennedy, who picked up an offer from NJIT this spring, is an athletic slasher who can get to the rim, his jumper improving over the years. Harris is a sharpshooting point guard, Fowlkes a 3-point specialist. Brown is an intriguing young post, a strong shot-blocker who can step out and knock down a 3-pointer and whose development will be key for the Raiders’ potential this year. 

“When we lock in and play together, I don’t think anybody can stop us,” Harris said. 

The likely fifth starter this year is senior guard Marquis Peoples, who got plenty of minutes last season as one of Allen’s top reserves. Also back from last year’s rotation are junior wing Armon Shockley (6-4), senior guard Will Fowlkes (6-0), and several football players, including 6-0 senior Jake Van Orden.

If Allen can get quality depth from his reserves, they’ll have all the firepower they need to compete for titles. That will mean going through Downingtown West, West Chester Henderson and Unionville in the Ches-Mont; with Plymouth Whitmarsh, Spring-Ford and Henderson in districts; with Roman Catholic and Archbishop Wood, among others, in states.

“We kinda know what to expect from six guys,” Allen said. “The X-factor for us will be the other guys. Last year, we had a lot of depth and we used a lot of depth, we used eight, nine guys a game. 

“If we can go eight guys, nine guys this year, and not miss a beat, we become super-successful, a team that can challenge for every championship that we play in. But we have to be that team.”