City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Three games into league play, the Inter-Ac has a solo leader on the boys’ side. 

With an overtime win over Episcopal Academy on Wednesday afternoon, Springside-Chestnut Hill Academy is the only 3-0 squad of the six Inter-Ac boys’ squads, sitting alone in first place with seven games left in the round-robin affair. 

Despite that, Blue Devils head coach Julian McFadden wasn’t ready to call his team a frontrunner, or anything of the sort. Too many games left to play, and too many other good teams in the league to be that confident.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said on a phone call afterwards. “Maybe if I get to 5-0, I’ll tell you yeah, there’s a target. The games are all so close, they’ve all been nail biters.”

McFadden’s not exaggerating. His three Inter-Ac wins have come by a grand total of seven points: by two over GA and EA and by three over Penn Charter, the latter coming on the road over a team that was ostensibly the preseason league favorite due to having more high-end talent than any other in the conference of some of the area’s oldest private schools.

That included the 59-57 triumph over the Churchmen, which saw both teams trade leads throughout the game; EA first, then SCH, though it was tied at halftime. Episcopal took the biggest lead of the game midway through the second half, but an Owen Kelly 3-pointer in the final minute of regulation sent things to the extra session.

The Blue Devils got up a couple possessions in overtime, but had to sweat through a late comeback and a potential game-winning heave to walk out unscathed. 

“We eeked it out,” McFadden said with a laugh. “I don’t believe in luck but this is one of those games that might have had some luck involved. It’s wild.”

Ron Brown III had 18 points and Keni Williams 10 for the guard-heavy, fun-to-watch SCH Academy, which plays Malvern Prep on the road on Friday in another battle for first place, after the Friars (2-1) dispatched Penn Charter on Wednesday. Kevin McCarthy had 24 points for Episcopal, which has Haverford School (1-2) visiting Friday coming off a win over Germantown Academy (0-3).

A couple other results of note on Wednesday night…

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CoBL Stories
North Penn 51, Bensalem 46 (Girls)
Malvern Prep 61, Penn Charter 56 (Boys)
Central Bucks West 44, Pennsbury 31

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Archbishop Wood sweats one out against La Salle

The Wood boys were already down a couple games in the Catholic League standings, the margin of error severely limited if John Mosco’s Vikings wanted to put themselves in a top seed to make their path to the Palestra as easy as possible. 

They almost had a slip-up they couldn’t afford, but a big second half from Jalil Bethea and Josh Reed lifted Wood to a 68-64 win over La Salle. 

The Explorers (0-5 PCL) put a major scare into Wood in the first half, getting 22 points from Nick Parisi (33 points) to go up 41-27 at the break in a game played at Wood. But the Vikings (3-2) clawed back over the course of the third quarter, getting within four points, then got over the hump in the final quarter. 

A Reed-to-Bethea behind-the-back pass for a layup put Wood up six with 3:36 left, but La Salle had it down to a one-point game in the final minute. Reed scored on a floater with 47 seconds left to make it a 64-61 game; a pair of his foul shots with 19 seconds left sealed it.

Bethea, Wood’s electric, Miami-bound star senior, scored 25 of his game-high 36 points in the second half. Reed, the Robin to Bethea’s Batman, had 16 of his 22 after intermission. 

“Him and Josh took over,” Mosco said. “They scored all the points in the second half.”

Wood needs to bounce back in a big way and quickly, with unbeaten St. Joe’s Prep (5-0) waiting on Friday at 17th and Girard; a young-but-dangerous Archbishop Carroll (2-3) visits Wood on Sunday. La Salle, in a search for its first PCL win for new head coach Ryan Ansel, gets the league’s other winless program, Lansdale Catholic, on Friday at home.

“We haven’t played 32 minutes yet because we’re not all on the same page,” Mosco said. “We’re not playing our best basketball, we’re getting by [...] There’s a lot more to give, that’s what I told them.

“We’ve got to wake up. This is the Catholic League.”

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Perkiomen Valley boys get some revenge on Methacton

Mike Poysden walked out of a loss to Methacton with a bad taste in his mouth. 

“I really think the first time we played Methacton, we left and said ‘we didn’t play real well,’” the Perkiomen Valley coach said of the 14-point defeat on Dec. 15. “We came unraveled at times and lost concepts and lost ideas of what we were trying to do.”

It didn’t take long for his Vikings to show they’ve learned a few things in the month since. Perkiomen Valley jumped out to a big deal and rode it to a 67-53 win, evening the two up behind division leader Spring-Ford in the PAC Liberty. 

Julian Sadler led the way for Perk Valley (13-3, 4-2) with a 29-point outing as the Vikings opened the game up 17-3, taking a 24-15 lead after one quarter. Methacton (10-5, 4-2) was able to cut the lead down to as little as six late, but the Vikings closed strong for their second straight win after a loss to Spring-Ford (12-3, 5-0) last week. 

Josh Tagert added 12 points and Kyle Shawaluk 10 for Perkiomen Valley, which is in the middle of playing four straight at home, with Upper Merion visiting Thursday night and Boyertown next Tuesday.

“Once we got that cushion, we traded punches for most of the game [...] we were able to get stops and rebounds really well [down the stretch],” Poysden said, adding of his senior center: “Josh Tagert has been, from where he was last year to where he is now, just an incredible development of an inside-out guy.”

The Vikings came into Wednesday night No. 10 in the District 1 6A formula rankings, within striking range of a top-eight seed and the first-round bye that comes with it. That’s a big deal, considering a second-round berth puts teams just one win away from qualifying for states, not to mention gives them the ability to watch their two potential opponents play each other in the first round.

“As a coach, I always try to downplay that stuff and focus on handling tonight’s assignments. I know the kids look at it, they refresh it all day long and look at the mental math. We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves,” Poysden said.” But yes, it would certainly be nice to sneak in there somewhere and get to see the team you play [in the first round].”

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Other Results

— Delco Christian’s boys beat Marple Newtown in a wild one, winning 53-46 behind 16 points from Khamai Orange and 14 from Beau Lyren. Delco Christian led 27-19 at half before Marple pitched a third-quarter shutout (10-0) to take the lead; Delco Christian responded with a 26-point fourth quarter explosion to run away for the win. 

— Wissahickon’s boys beat Lower Moreland 62-61 in overtime, as Dom Vacchiano had 22 points and Brayden Ryan added 20 points for the Trojans. Lower Moreland led 31-26 at the break, but Wissahickon had taken the lead before LM’s John Kroll brought the game into the extra session with his foul shooting. Vacchiano and Ryan each hit a 3-pointer in overtime to help Wissahickon come away with the win.