City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Blaize Eldridge and Kaiden Robinson commute to Sun Valley games and practices together, two of the Vanguards’ captains and close neighbors getting a chance to talk hoops and life for 10 minutes back and forth each way.

After Thursday night, they’re going to have a new story to bring up, and one gets the idea it might get discussed with some frequency. For the two were major reasons that Sun Valley pulled off its most incredible win of the season, a come-from-behind, 62-58 win over Downingtown West in the first round of the Ches-Mont playoffs.

“Literally crazy” was how Eldridge described it. “Amazing” was the first word that came to Robinson’s mind. Sun Valley coach Steve Maloney, who graduated from Sun Valley in ‘02 and is now in his 10th year guiding the program, said it was the biggest comeback he’s ever seen.

“We could have folded, we could have folded,” Robinson continued. “As captains, our job is to keep us together and early in the season we weren’t really doing that, we weren’t really a team. This game proved how far we’ve come. 

“To go down 21-0 to a good Downingtown West team and to come back and win that game, it’s amazing.”

The Vanguards looked dead in the water for the first seven minutes. Downingtown West, behind 6-foot-7 junior Zeke Staz, scored the game’s first 21 points, a deluge that looked like the Whippets were ready to run away to face Coatesville in Saturday’s semifinals at West Chester.

Sun Valley, like it has all season, battled back.

The Vanguards (15-8) began the year 1-4, losing three of those games by 25 points or more. A shift in defensive strategy to a 1-3-1 zone and half-court trap along with some rotation adjustments did the trick, leading to wins in 13 of the next 16 games, enough to boost them into both the Ches-Mont and District 1 5A playoff fields.

Even though they lost to Unionville by 28 in the season finale, it was a group that entered the postseason with confidence it didn’t have a couple months ago. And so when Maloney called his second timeout of the first quarter, the first one doing nothing to stop the onslaught, there was still a sense that his group could get it done.

“During the timeout we were just stressing what got us to this point — do the little things, don’t try to be a hero, don’t try to play by yourself out there, stay with your four teammates” Maloney said. “Defensively we just got connected, and stayed together.”

Trailing 24-4 after one quarter, Sun Valley began its climb. Eldridge, who set a new career high with 33 points — more than he’d ever scored in a game, he said, not just for Sun Valley — knocked down back-to-back 3-pointers, the second one a four-point play, to fire up the crowd of several hundred which had mostly been silent thus far.

Eldridge scored 15 points during the second quarter alone, getting Sun Valley all the way back within seven points before an Antonio Lewis layup had West up 34-25 at the break. 

The Vanguards got as close as six early in the third quarter, though Downingtown West (13-10) extended the advantage to 44-32 midway through the quarter. Sun Valley made another push, an 11-0 run capped by an Eldridge 3-pointer with 20 seconds left in the fourth, Robinson (12 points) also hitting a triple during the stretch while senior guard Noah Griffin (10 points) got to the hoop for a couple buckets. 

It was a two-point Downingtown West lead going into the fourth, but the momentum was all on Sun Valley’s side. Robinson put them up for the first time, 47-45 with 6:05 left, the game’s only lead change.

Eldridge once again laid the hammer blow; a turnaround jumper in the lane made it 51-47 with 3:40 remaining, and a corner 3-pointer with just under three minutes to play made it 54-47, the Vanguards’ bench losing its mind as Eldridge sprinted down the floor, a big smile on his face.

The 6-foot-3 forward was outstanding, knocking down five 3-pointers on seven attempts and went to the foul line on another, hitting all three; even though he was undersized in the post against Staz and 6-4 Donovan Fromhartz, he also toughed his way to a few buckets inside. Overall, he was 11-for-16 from the field and 6-for-6 from the stripe, with six rebounds, two blocks and a steal.

“Blaize, his performance was second to none,” Robinson said. “He’s a dog. He wants it more than anyone.”

“I just know that sometimes my teammates look for me to score, and I just have to do that to get the guys going,” Aldridge said. “Once I’m going, then that gets them going as well. Obviously once we got that, we were unstoppable.”

Downingtown West got a couple late 3-pointers from freshman Isaiah Hicklen and Staz to force Sun Valley to make its foul shots. The Vanguards were 8-of-10 from the line down the stretch, Griffin hitting two with both 23.5 seconds and 5.8 seconds left, the last two sealing the win.

“This season, we’ve been in close games and we’ve always been able to (close out), Eldridge said, “so I think that definitely helped, the last time [against Delco Christian] we were in a close game too and were able to come back and win. I think that experience is just how we were able to come back.”

The Vanguards will face a tough opponent on Saturday in the Raiders. Coatesville (16-6), off a state quarterfinal appearance last year, won the Ches-Mont National with an 11-1 record, featuring an aggressive backcourt led by seniors Dior Kennedy, Zuri Harris and Marquis Peoples. 

Expect it to be discussed plenty during those car rides to and from practice, with the added knowledge that no matter what happens during the first seven minutes, Sun Valley’s pulled off some improbable things already this season.

“Me and Kaiden were talking, we wanted to get to West Chester, because we went there when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore,” Aldridge said. “I wanted to get back on that stage and see what we can do, because I know that we have a team that’s capable of doing what you saw.”

By Quarter
SV:    4   |  21  |  18  |  19  ||  62
DW:  24  |  10  |  11  |  13  ||  58

Shooting
SV: 21-45 FG (6-19 3PT), 14-17 FT
DW: 20-47 FG (6-19 3PT), 12-20 FT

Scoring
SV: Blaize Eldridge 33, Kaiden Robinson 12, Noah Griffin 10, Aaron Freeman 5, Donnie Maieron 2

DW: Zeke Staz 23, Donovan Fromhartz 11, Brady Moore 9, Ryan Barker 8, Isaiah Hicklen 5, Antonio Lewis 2