City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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ROYERSFORD — It’s easy to forget that Spring-Ford broke a six-year Pioneer Athletic Conference championship drought last season.

This time a year ago the Rams were still asserting themselves as the league’s top dog.

Coming off a league title, district runner-up and state semifinal run, the Rams knew it would be a little different in 2023-24. They’re taking everyone’s best punch.

After a slow start, the Rams are answering the challenge. They escaped with a 53-52 home win over PAC Liberty Division rival Perkiomen Valley on Thursday, surviving two Vikings’ game winning attempts before the final horn to win their eighth straight game.

“It was definitely easier last year because we didn’t have a name,” junior Tommy Kelly said. “Nobody knew who we were. We had a nice run, and now everybody wants to beat us. That’s what makes it fun.”

The Rams (11-3, 5-0 Liberty) put together a statement 63-32 win over Methacton last week. Another appeared in the making when a suffocating defensive effort put Spring-Ford ahead 27-13 at halftime Thursday against PV (11-3, 3-2 Liberty), which came in on its own seven-game win streak.

Then came Vikings’ senior guard Julian Sadler, who had 11 of his game-high 23 points in the third quarter to cut the lead to five. PV came all the way back to take a 46-45 three on a three by senior Ryan Murphy with less than three minutes left.

Spring-Ford regained control, helped by a steal and score from Matt Zollers and tough bucket by Kelly, but a Sadler triple from NBA range cut the Rams’ lead back down to one with 5.9 seconds left. Vikings junior Athony Rodriguez poked the ball away after the inbounds to give Sadler a decent look that hit the front rim, followed by a putback attempt by Kyle Shawaluk that came up short.

“He’s a special player,” Spring-Ford coach Joe Dempsey said of Sadler. “I told Mike (Poysden) before the game. He’s one of the most efficient high school players I’ve ever seen. He’s so calm, he’s so poised, he makes everybody better. If you double team him the other guys hurt you. One minute it looks like he’s not a factor in the game. The next minute he’s drilling threes. He could have easily hit that last one.”

Despite picking up two early fouls, junior Jacob Nguyen scored 14 and sophomore forward Oben Mokonchu matched him with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Senior E.J. Campbell added another 11 and Kelly chipped in 10.

This Spring-Ford team isn’t quite as deep or experienced as last year’s group — at least yet — after seeing five seniors depart. However, Kelly said the unselfish attitude of that championship group has carried over.

“We’re all sacrificing a lot,” Kelly said. “Like E.J., he could be averaging 20 on any of these teams, but he’s working it around. Jacob if he can’t find his shot, his defense is getting a lot better. Matt coming off football is playing great, and Oben is really coming into himself.”

Dempsey didn’t know much about the Pioneer Athletic Conference landscape before taking over at Spring-Ford in 2021. He quickly found out the games against the Vikings have a little extra juice. Two crowded student sections filled the bleachers Thursday.

The Vikings won four of the last five in the series prior to Thursday. After Spring-Ford won the first meeting in 2022-23, Perk Valley snapped the Rams’ 20-game win streak and handed them their lone league loss in last season’s regular-season finale. An Upper Merion buzzer beater against PV in double overtime of the league semifinals prevented a round three in the PAC title game.

Perk Valley is right up there alongside the likes of Phoenixville, Pottstown, Methacton amongst the top challengers to potentially dethrone Spring-Ford this season. A poor first half kept them from a big win, but they proved their a real threat to take down the Rams in the second half. The next meeting between the rivals is Feb. 1.

“It’s just gonna take us to play hard and play the way we do,” Sadler said. “That second half was a great way to see how we play. We just really came out flat. Next game, hopefully we’ll come out better prepared and not be as flat and we’ll be alright.”

Spring-Ford dropped its first two games to Parkland and Unionville, both returning state playoff squads. The Rams have won 10 of 11 games since the 0-2 start with the lone defeat a lopsided loss to a Neumann-Goretti squad that’s currently mowing through the Catholic League.

Dempsey’s squad currently sits at No. 5 in the District 1-6A power rankings and on top of the PAC standings with an unblemished 6-0 mark in league play and wins over Phoenixville, Methacton and Perk Valley already.

He hopes the Rams can remain focused on enjoying their success rather than try to match the success of last year’s squad.

“Sometimes the pressure gets to the kids,” Dempsey said. “We came in with all these high expectations, and at the end of the day, everybody wants to play hard and we have great coaches in the league and everyone wants to beat you. We’re trying to enjoy it. We’re doing a lot of team building things and we’re just trying to enjoy each other and enjoy this journey and not let last year affect us at all.”

Spring-Ford 53, Perkiomen Valley 52

By Quarter
Perk Valley:  7  |  6  |  19  |  20  ||  52
Spring-Ford:  14  |  13  |  10  |  16  ||  53

Scoring
Perk Valley: Julian Sadler 23, Josh Taggert 11, Ryan Murphy 7, Anthony Rodriguez 5, Kyle Shawaluk 2, Jakob Harken 2.

Spring-Ford: Jacob Nguyen 14, Oben Mokonchu 14, E.J. Campbell 11, Tommy Kelly 10, Matt Zollers 6.