City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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WEST PHILADELPHIA — The Northeast boys basketball team had its best season in recent history fizzle out at the end of the 2022-23 campaign

Eleven straight wins were followed by four losses in five games to finish out the year. A heartbreaking loss to SLA-Beeber on a putback at the buzzer in the first round of the Philadelphia Public League playoffs was the lasting memory the Vikings carried into the offseason.

“Last year was a great lesson,” eighth-year coach Steven Novosel said on Thursday. “To win 10 and then finish the way we did, that’s fresh in their memories and we know about that, we’re aware about that. We’re not settling. We’re not getting complacent. We’re not letting that creep in, and we’re just sticking to our standard and playing Northeast basketball.”

This season is shaping into one that’s even better for Novosel and his team. A revenge win over Beeber improved the Vikings to 12-1 with their 11th straight victory on Thursday. Their lone blemish is a loss at Pennsbury in their second game of the season.

The goal in 2023-24 is to keep the momentum going all the way through the end of the year.

“Just keeping our head straight and making sure our ego don’t get too big from winning a couple games,” senior 6-4 forward Jalen Lee-Womack said. “Keep the goal in mind, not just a couple of regular-season wins.”

In his first five or six years heading the program at Northeast, Novosel watched players come and go. He finally found a core to stick around.

Seniors Darrius Gaeta (15.2 ppg, 4.8 apg) and Lee-Womack (8.9 ppg, 5.7 rpg) and juniors Mikey Freeman (10.1 ppg) and Sharif Wallace have been together at the varsity level for three years, starting with a 10-10 season in 2021-22. They improved to 14-7 last year with others like junior Bobby Perry (8.5 ppg) and senior Kyree Williams playing bigger roles.

Only two members from last year’s group are not back this season, giving Novosel the most continuity he’s ever had with a team.

“Every spring is always a challenge where you never know if the transfer bug is going to hit you,’” Novosel said. 

“For them to stay together is a tribute to them, their believe in me, their believe in each other and now we’re seeing that success and we’re having our best start in my career and best start that I can think of at Northeast in the last 15 years.”

Gaeta, a 6-2 guard who averaged double figures all three seasons at Northeast, can feel the impact of those seasons playing together along with the offseason games in the spring, summer and fall he and his teammates have logged in the last three years.

“There’s a better chemistry that we have, a better bond,” Gaeta said. “We all know what goal we want. We want to win.”

Prior to last season, Northeast’s 13-10 mark in 2005-06 was the program’s best record in the past two decades. The Vikings are on pace to pass that again and more with nine regular season games still to play. They’re tied at the top of the Public League’s ‘B’ Division with Engineering & Sciences at 7-0 the two squads scheduled to play at E&S on Tuesday.

Northeast doesn’t have a lot of size with Lee-Womack and Wallace (6-3) acting as the team’s bigs. They both play big on the glass, but without a true post the Vikings like to get active on defense and try to create opportunities to get out in transition.

“That’s important to be able to outrun them, outhustle them, so we get down the floor before them,” Lee-Womack said.

A Public League playoff win is at the top of the list of goals for Northeast this season. That’s something this group hasn’t accomplished yet and something the program hasn’t accomplished since 2016.

If they can advance out of their PPL opener this season, they'll also give themselves a chance to fight for a state playoff spot. Central, Kensington, Lincoln, Olney and George Washington are the other 6A schools fighting for the league’s lone guaranteed spot. in the PIAA tournament.

“We gotta stay focused, keep practicing hard, keep working hard and keep winning,” Gaeta said.

Novosel isn’t too worried about his team losing focus. They don’t need too many reminders of how close they were to a postseason win last season.

“We talk about that all the time,” Novosel said. “We lost on a buzzer beater putback, and that was a detail that we failed to maintain where we didn’t box out on the weak side. Those are great learning tools and not wanting to have that happen again.”