City of Basketball Love

By Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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PHILADELPHIA — Taylor Hinkle didn’t mince words describing Holy Family’s outlook on this season.

The Tigers dropped their season opener on Nov. 11 then haven’t looked back since, starting a win streak that will carry into the new year at a robust 12 in a row. With the core of a 20-win and CACC semifinalist team that was denied an NCAA berth returning, Holy Family understandably had high expectations and plenty of motivation entering the 2023-24 campaign that so far, it’s been meeting.

It took a lot of contributions, but the Tigers were able to hold off visiting Lincoln 66-62 on Sunday to make it a dozen wins in a row with CACC play waiting next week.

“It’s unfinished business,” Hinkle said.

The sophomore, a CB South graduate, led the Tigers with 16 points while adding six rebounds, an assist and a block in another strong outing in her first season as a starter. Hinkle has already pulled in two CACC Player of the Week honors and a CACC Defensive Player of the Week this season, but it’s been far from a one-woman show on Frankford Ave.

Holy Family went 10 deep Sunday and that wasn’t an outlier, the Tigers investing in their depth as an asset that’s played heavily into the program’s first double-digit win streak in a decade. Tigers coach Bernadette Laukaitis, in her fifth season at the helm, wanted her team to embrace having a chip on its shoulder from the moment last season ended.

“With the leadership we have in our veterans, and even from some of the young kids who played a lot last year, they’re just really locked in,” Laukaitis said. “When they came in that locked in, from the first game to now, every day they’re just hungrier and hungrier. Our slogan this year is ‘unfinished business,’ they’re playing with that chip on their shoulder which is a good thing because they’ve come in with such an unbelievable mindset of taking care of business.”

Hinkle and classmate Skyler Searfoss have been the mainstays this season, the two sophomores first and second on the team in scoring but also not necessarily having to do that every game. Searfoss, who teamed with Hinkle for two summers playing with the Comets before both came to Holy Family, had eight points, three boards and two assists Sunday.

A popular trope in basketball is that it’s not about who starts a game, but who finishes one. The Tigers feel like they truly can pick any five players, put them on the court and play well. They’ve gone 12 deep this season, with the 10 that saw the court Sunday all having played in all 13 games thus far.

Against Lincoln, Jess Riepe didn’t even play in the first half then came in to hit a pair of important threes in Holy Family’s 12-1 run to close the quarter. Contributions like that have become standard throughout the year.

“It’s a testament to how hard we worked in the offseason,” Searfoss, last season’s CACC Rookie of the Year, said. “If you look from last year to this year, we go much deeper this year and we might have ‘starters’ but the way we push each other at practice, any time someone’s number is called, they’re ready.”

The win streak, which started the day after the season-opening loss, has seen Holy Family win at home and on the road, start 2-0 in the CACC and featured a road win over nationally-ranked Bentley on Dec. 18. Playing for the first time in 13 days on Sunday, the Tigers showed some signs of the layoff with 19 turnovers but also not only found a way to win, they turned up the intensity as it was needed.

Ava Morrow gave Holy Family an early boost with nine of her 11 points in the first half, senior Linsday Tretter spaced her 10 points out and graduate guard Carly Bolivar, an offseason transfer from Alliance, had another solid game off the bench with seven points, eight rebounds and four assists. The Tigers’ reserves compiled 21 points, 12 rebounds and five assists between them and the quartet of Bolivar, Riepe, Jenn Kokolus and Claire Dougherty all played a role in the fourth quarter getting Holy Family to the finish.

Bolivar was named the CACC Defensive Player of the Week on Dec. 20 and is third on the team in scoring despite not having started a game yet. Freshman Kara Meredith, the team’s other Archbishop Wood alum along with Tretter, has had a couple double-digit scoring efforts off the bench to prop up the team’s overall depth.

“We’re extremely proud of our bench,” Laukaitis said. “The type of love they have for each other and just the hard work everybody puts in for us to be as prepared and as deep as we are, I think that’s a credit to them.”

The Tigers don’t care who starts, who finishes or even who happens to be out there with five minutes left in the third and a wave of subs have just checked in. If someone doesn’t have it going on a particular day, they’re not pressured to force anything because someone else is going to pick up for them.

“That’s the beauty of basketball,” Hinkle said. “It’s not going to be one person every game. We play 12 people, we’re very deep, so I wouldn’t say anything changed and it’s more that we just have the same mindset, the same goal and we’re all going to go after it hard.”

Lincoln certainly did all it could to end Holy Family’s streak. The Lions led 10-5 early before the hosts went on a 13-0 run to end the first quarter, then Lincoln cut the lead to four before the Tigers had their big run to close the third quarter.

Even then, the Lions still got within three with 35 seconds to go thanks to 20 points from West Catholic alum Ciani Montgomery and 15 from Anyssa Fields.

“The big attention today was the little things we talked about,” Laukaitis said. “There’s so many things you go over on a team in a scout, probably ad nauseam, but when you put that stuff aside it always does come down to the little things.”

Hinkle said that Sunday’s win showed her how committed the group was during its eight-day break over the holiday and that everyone did their work on their own to come back stronger than they’d left. A lesson the coaches always harp is “what you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it,” and for this team, the coaches are seeing a lot being put into it.

As for what the Tigers are getting out of it, 12 straight wins says a lot on its own. It also won’t mean much if Holy Family doesn’t carry it into the heart of CACC play where the rest of that unfinished business resides.

“We made the statement in non-conference and now going into conference play, we’re still carrying that chip on our shoulder,” Searfoss said. “We finished pretty strong last year so even taking that step further that we need to I think is driving us into conference play.”