City of Basketball Love

By Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
__

PHILADELPHIA — Given what his last five days had entailed, Chris Roantree was pretty put together Monday night.

The Father Judge basketball coach’s odyssey began Thursday when he and wife Megan welcomed a new baby son, carried through a weekend snowstorm and concluded Monday night with Roman Catholic coming to Bill Fox Jr. Gymnasium. His team had spent the whole summer, fall and all of December preparing for games of that caliber but they’d still have to actually get it done on the floor.

The Crusaders delivered Roantree the biggest PCL win of his tenure thus far, a strong fourth quarter helping Judge knock Roman from the league’s unbeatens with a 76-62 win.

“My wife’s the real hero, not me, she’s doing great and the baby’s actually been sleeping well,” Roantree said in Judge’s locker room after the game. “He slept for six hours last night.

“I put a post up when we announced the baby and said she became the ultimate basketball wife, she had him at the perfect time. We’d been joking about having somebody come pull me off the sideline but it worked out.”

It worked out pretty well for his basketball team too, Judge and Roman trading shots for three quarters before the home side took command with some gutsy shot-making in the final period. The Crusaders had four players - Kevair Kennedy, Laquan Byrd, Nazir Tyler and Derrick Morton-Rivera - all score at least 16 points with Byrd (17) and Kennedy (18) combining for 19 points in the final stanza.

Rocco Westfield’s three with 7:41 left gave Father Judge a 51-49 advantage and a lead it would hold the rest of the game. However, it wasn't that one or the three other three-point shots or all the free throws the Crusaders hit down the stretch that were the difference according to Byrd.

“Our defense, our defense really clicked the last eight minutes of the game,” Byrd said. “We locked in on defense and just really got it done. We started putting more pressure on the ball, made them turn the ball over and shoot bad shots.”

Roman Catholic was paced by 15 points from Shareef Jackson, a notable feat considering the forward spent roughly half the game off the floor. Jackson was busy picking Judge apart in the first quarter, scoring 12 points and assisting two other baskets but when he picked up a second personal foul with 25 seconds left in the frame, he sat much of the next to avoid further trouble.

Jackson was fouled going to the rim with 55 seconds left in the third and went to the floor grabbing at his lower leg. The 6-foot-7 junior was able to take his free throws, but then exited the game to get re-taped. Despite his best efforts, Jackson wasn’t able to return and was still favoring his leg going through the postgame handshake line.

With Roman’s anchor on both ends not on the floor, it allowed Judge to ramp up its aggression.

“We were locked in defensively and obviously, Shareef going down, it didn’t help them not being able to throw the ball into him,” Roantreee said. “Our perimeter guys really locked in defensively and we were in good help but we also shared the ball a lot better in the fourth quarter.”

Byrd, who hit a three that put Judge up 56-51 with 5:05 to play, then converted a bucket on an aggressive cut to the rim off a baseline inbound with 2:35 left, noted Jackson’s absence on the floor did impact what the Crusaders were doing on both ends.

“He was their big guy, once he wasn’t there, it made driving lanes easier,” Byrd said. “We were feeling it off each other and once we do that, we’re a very hard team to stop.”

Now in his third season coaching at his alma mater, Roantree put this particular team through the ringer to prepare for moments like Monday. It started over the summer, a mantra of taking the next step driving the team to improve on its 6-7 PCL finish from a season ago.

Judge pushed itself at Philly Live in June, the team went to Florida in December and Roantree loaded his other nonleague dates with challenges so it would deliver something positive in the Catholic League standings.

“We’ve consistently talked about it paying off, it was going to pay off and we were going to get somebody,” Roantree said. “We feel like when we play together and do all the right things, we can play with anybody. I think with what we’ve done so far, we’ve shown that.

“We talked about getting the wins we got last year, then going and getting the wins we didn’t and that’s what gets our record from 6-7 to over .500.”

Judge still couldn’t quite put Roman away. Tyler, who was terrific in the second quarter with 10 points, buried a three with 1:25 left to put the Crusaders ahead 68-58, then the Cahillites scored four quick points and it was right back to six.

The Crusaders would sink six straight free throws, Roman unable to convert on the other end in the interim, to finally secure the win. Byrd, a senior who had never beaten Roman prior to Monday, called it a significant win but not a win he was surprised by given what he feels about his team.

“Our coach always tells us to shoot with confidence,” Byrd said. “That’s a big key with our team, shoot with confidence.

“We know what type of team we are. Everybody else thinks of us as underdogs but we all know what type of team we are.”

Monday ended one odyssey for Roantree but also started another. The matchup with Roman was the first of four PCL games in seven days, the Crusaders traveling to Bonner-Prendergast on Wednesday and St. Joe’s Prep on Friday before returning home next Monday to host northeast rival Archbishop Ryan.

“It’s a good win for the program but it means nothing unless we can turn the page because we have a brutal stretch coming up,” Roantree said. “It started tonight. We can’t look ahead to anybody, that’s just how our league is now.”

By Quarter

FATHER JUDGE 17 | 14 | 17 | 28 || 76

ROMAN CATHOLIC 23 | 9 | 17 | 13 || 62

Scoring
FJ - Kevair Kennedy 18, Laquan Byrd 17, Nazir Tyler 16, Derrick Morton-Rivera 16, Anthony Lilly 4, Rocco Westfield 3, Everett Barnes 2

RC - Shareef Jackson 15, Travis Reed 14, Kabrien Goss 8, Hunter Johnson 6, CJ Miller 5, Sebastian Edwards 5, Sammy Jackson 5, Robert Cottrell 4