City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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LANSDALE — The breakthrough didn’t come until after the Philadelphia Catholic League season for the Archbishop Carroll girls basketball team last season.

Until carving their path to the PIAA Class 6A title, the Patriots were just one notch below the top three teams in the PCL.

Carroll spoiled an opportunity to prove things are different this year last Saturday when it relinquished a fourth-quarter lead to reigning league runner-up Archbishop Wood. They wouldn’t make the same mistakes down the stretch Friday night in a dominant 44-31 victory over reigning champion Lansdale Catholic, which was powered by 22 points from senior Army commit Brooke Wilson.

“Last year, we fell short in almost every single tough game,” Wilson said. “And this year it’s playing to our abilities and we know this year could be the year, and we all know it is the year. It’s just about executing every single day in practice, executing on game day and playing Carroll basketball.”

Carroll (10-7, 5-1 PCL) made things look easy Friday night, jumping out to an 18-9 lead after a hot shooting first quarter and never looking back. Wilson’s co-captain Felicity McFillin jump started the Patriots early with three triples in the opening frame. Wilson added another seven in the quarter.

By halftime the Carroll lead grew to 29-14 and the Patriots led 38-17 heading to the fourth after holding the Crusaders (13-3, 4-2) to just three points in the third quarter.

“It’s all about intensity and warning to do it,” Wilson said of the defensive effort. “We are fully capable of playing good defense, and it’s just really locking into the game plan and staying focused and trusting our feet and just everything that we learned in practice.”

The Patriots led Archbishop Wood by 11 with four minutes to go on Saturday before the Vikings finished the game on a 16-0 run to pull out a comeback win. Carroll’s lead ballooned as large as 21 in the fourth quarter Friday night.

Lansdale Catholic closed the gap to 12 around the 3:30 mark with an 8-0 run that included threes from sophomore Aubrey Mobley and senior Olivia Boccella and a bucket by junior forward Grace McDonough, who led her team with 13 points. Mobley added nine.

There was no panic in the Patriots this time. They weren’t going to let another one slip away.

“I just said to them basketball is a game of runs,” Carroll coach Renie Shields said. “I think last week showed we have to do better when teams are running at us. We kept our composure down the stretch, and they were scoring. That was their run, and we did what we had to do to finish out the game.”

Wilson is someone Shields is looking to as a tone setter on both ends of the floor this season. It’s a torch she is carrying from her older sister Taylor, who is already at Army this season.

She's someone who can guide the Patriots through those bumpy moments in big games. She had eight points in the the third quarter Friday and went 5-for-6 from the line in the fourth.

Even more impressive may have been her effort and defense, highlighted by taking a charge with her team up big early in the fourth and picking off a steal to help slow the LC run later in the period.

“Every single day, I come into practice and I come into the game, and that’s something I can control,” Wilson said. “I can control how much effort I put out there and my resilience and that’s what I pride myself on, my effort, my reliance and working hard every single day. It helps my teammates see and everyone works off of it.”

The Patriots finished fourth in the Catholic League last season behind LC, Wood and Cardinal O’Hara at the top of the division, eventually losing to the Crusaders in the Catholic League semifinals.

They went 0-3 against those top three squads last season during the regular season before finally breaking through for a big win over O’Hara in the state semis on the way to a PIAA Class 6A crown.

“This year, last year, every year, we know we’re capable of so much and we hold ourselves to a really high standard,” Wilson said. “It’s all about execution and when game time comes, game day comes it’s about executing and going through with our plan.”

Wood is the early front-runner in the league after handing Carroll, O’Hara and Neumann-Goretti their lone league losses thus far and also knocking off LC. Carroll looks like it’s right there though.

The Patriots have two more measuring stick games coming up at home against O’Hara on Tuesday and home against Neumann-Goretti on Friday.

“We have work to do,” Shields said. “We had Wood, we had Lansdale Catholic and now we have to go play O’Hara and Goretti, so we have a long road. This is just the start.”

Archbishop Carroll 41, Lansdale Catholic 31

By Quarter

Archbishop Carroll  18 | 11 | 9 | 6 || 44

Lansdale Catholic   9 | 5 | 3 | 12 || 31

Scoring
Archbishop Carroll: Brooke Wilson 22, Felicity McFillin 9, Alexis Eberz 8, Abbie McFillin 3, Bridget Archbold 2.

Lansdale Catholic: Grace McDonough 13, Aubrey Mobley 9, Olivia Boccella 6, Allie Esposito 2, Sanyiah Littlejohn 1