City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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HAVERFORD, PA — They gathered together a few weeks ago at a local Starbucks. Aniya Eberhart knew what to say and how to say it. The Haverford High School 5-foot-10 guard is one of the Fords’ captains. She played a big role in Haverford reaching the PIAA District 1 Class 6A championship last year.

The Millersville-bound senior knows what it takes to win and to lead.

So, when the Fords dropped a surprise loss at Penncrest, she called a players-only meeting and she and her teammates spoke about accentuating their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses.

Haverford is now riding a 10-game winning streak, with the Fords’ latest coming in a start-to-finish 48-34 victory over Garnet Valley on Thursday night.

Eberhart finished with 15 points in support of junior Rian Dotsey’s game-high 18, while Kylie Mulholland led the Jags with 16.

The victory pushed Haverford from the No. 7 seed in District 1 Class 6A at the start of the night to the No. 5 seed with an 18-3 overall record and 13-2 mark in the Central League, while Garnet Valley fell to 17-3 and 12-3 in the league.

Eberhart was part of a history-making team last season, when the Fords won a single-season record 27 games and reached the district championship.

“We had a lot of confidence coming into this season, and I had to take more shots, so scoring was a big thing and keeping up my defense,” said Eberhart, who committed to Millersville in late December. “Getting my college choice out of the way has made this senior year go well. 

“This is a close group. We knew what we had to do this year, but when we lost to Penncrest a few weeks ago, we met and talked about what we could to be better.”

No one raised their voices, Eberhart stressed, and it was a respectful discussion that helped. This team came into the season with the goal of getting back to the district championship.

“Communication is the key and we spoke about running the floor, and I felt we stopped doing that in the Penncrest game,” she said. “We know each other’s strengths and what we need to do, and where we need to be on the court. The goal is get back to where we were last year—but first is [to] win the Central League again.”

By the way the Fords are playing right now, they are going to be a tough out for any team. They are coming off a 38-27 victory over the district No. 1 seed Conestoga, holding the Pioneers to a season-low 27 points on January 25.

That stubborn defense carried over into this week, holding Garnet Valley scoreless the first four minutes of the game Thursday night, and not allowing the Jaguars to score a basket until there was 7:21 left in the second quarter, when Mulholland scored on a driving layup. Garnet Valley did not break into double figures until there was 6:19 left in the third quarter, again on a Mulholland basket.

By then, Haverford was up, 29-11.

“This team battles,” Fords’ seventh-year coach Lauren Pellicane said. “This team has pieces that fits well together in the system we have. I think we are close defensively to where I thought we would be. That’s how we have to win. We are going to have to defend and rebound to win.

“We have to get better in a lot of areas.”

One area may be at the foul line, where if the Fords had a flaw on Thursday night, that was it. Haverford made 16 of 34 free throws, and to Pellicane, that is unacceptable, especially with the Central League tournament about to begin followed by the district playoffs.

It is a fixable area of Haverford’s game.

Safe for the free throw shooting, the Fords have a lot to bottle from the Garnet Valley victory. They held the Jags’ dangerous Haylie Adamski to five points and forced Garnet Valley into missing its first 10 shots and into just two of 23 from the floor in the first half.

Haverford, meanwhile, looked unstoppable at times, with the combination of Dotsey’s presence inside and Eberhart’s driving ability, a new touch that she has added to her arsenal this season.

“Aniya is very difficult to guard, she is explosive to the rim, and she gives us something other teams don’t have, and she is our leader, we go as she goes,” Pellicane said. “Last year is not on our minds at all. A lot of our bench from last year are playing major roles, like Meg Kelly, Nat Wright, Ashley Wright, they have all stepped up.”

As the crunch time of the season approaches, it looks like the Fords are finding the right gears at the right time.

By Quarter
Garnet Valley:      3   |   8   |  13  |  13  ||  34
Haverford High:  15  |  10  |  12  |  11  ||  48

Scoring
Garnet Valley: Kylia Mulholland 16, Emily Olsen 6, Haylie Adamski 5, Addison Adamski 5, Savannah Saunders 2.

Haverford: Rian Dotsey 18, Aniya Eberhart 15, Ashley Wright 7, Natalie Wright 4, Megan Kelly 2, Tess Durfee 2.

Joseph Santoliquito is a hall of fame, award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.