City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@jsantoliquito)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2024-25 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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The last time Father Judge won the Catholic League championship was in 1998, under the legendary Bill Fox, when the Crusaders went 22-8 overall and 12-2 in the Catholic League.

Chris Roantree was a junior on that team.

Last season, the fourth-year Judge coach pulled his team to the vaunted Palestra for the first time since 1999 when Roantree was a senior at Judge. He breathes Judge basketball history. He preaches Judge legacy. He knows what winning means at Judge because he lived it.

Roantree feels he has the makings of a legacy type of team this season. The Crusaders return four very prominent starters on a team that finished 16-8 overall and 9-4 in the Catholic League, knocked out by eventual two-time defending Catholic League champion Roman Catholic in the Catholic League semifinals, 65-57.

Senior 6-foot-1 guard Kevair Kennedy (Merrimack), 6-foot-9 senior center Everett Barnes (Loyola Md.), sharp-shooting 6-4 junior guard Derrick Morton-Rivera and 6-3 sophomore guard Nazir Tyler will be the cornerstones of this Crusaders’ team. Depth will come from 6-foot junior guard Rocco Westfield, 6-4 senior wing Kevin Beck, 6-3 senior Dylan Handley and 6-5 junior wing Max Moshinski.

The Crusaders are deep, talented, well-coached and it appears that they are ready to take bigger steps this season. Judge, which entered the Catholic League playoffs as the No. 6 seed, upset Miami-bound Jalil Bethea and Archbishop Wood, 78-71, in the league quarterfinals. Judge saw its season end in the Catholic League semifinal loss to Roman Catholic, since only two Catholic League Class 6A teams qualify for the District 12 playoffs, and Wood qualified based on a better league regular-season record.

But Kennedy, Barnes, Tyler and Morton-Rivera distinctly remember walking off the Palestra court last February, heads down, trying to show tolerance against the emotional pangs of their season ending.

The Crusaders proved what they could do by beating Roman last year during the regular season, 76-62, with 55 points coming back in that victory.

“I think we are right there (for a Catholic League championship). We come into this season knowing what real losing is like, and we don’t want to go through that feeling again,” said Kennedy, a preseason candidate for Catholic League MVP. “We lost at the Palestra and we got beat—and beat bad. I think we were too satisfied with just making it there. You hear about the feeling, ‘just happy to be there.’ That was us.

"We are capable of winning the Catholic League championship. I’m 100-percent, 200-percent feeling that. We have the talent. We have the confidence. We have the perfect team—and we have good chemistry. No one can stop us on offense.

“If we can be consistent on defense every game, no one can stop us. Teams scored too much on us. I would say the problem was communication. We can fix that. We know what it feels like to get to the Palestra, and we will handle it better this time. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was a little nervous. We didn’t hit our shots.”

Barnes feels the same way as Kennedy.

“We have the pieces, and our connection is really good to get back to the Palestra,” said Barnes, who changed his body makeup and admitted he lost a lot of body fat over the summer. “Kevair and I have great communication. It will be even better this year. I’m in way better shape, I can jump better, and I can get up and down the court better. Kevair told me to be louder and that communication has been built even stronger this summer.”

Roantree is putting the brakes on any speculation beyond December. He likes this team. The Crusaders will play an arduous schedule. They have been under the bright lights. They will be more prepared if it happens again.

“We were content to get to the Palestra, and as a staff, it is something we preached,” Roantree admitted. “After we beat Wood in the quarterfinals, everyone was excited about getting to the Palestra. We played a Roman team that we beat earlier in the year that no one thought we could beat, and they came out with some adjustments in the second quarter (of the semifinals) and everyone from the coaches on down did not do a good job. It was about maturity. It is not easy being down at the Palestra for the first time. Our goal is to get back and win a championship. We have matured. This team is capable of doing it. We don’t just want to get to the Palestra, we want to win the Catholic League championship.

“This will come down to Kevair. He has a chance to be one of the best—and possibly the best—to ever come out of this program. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Kevair about legacy and winning. We spoke about leaving that legacy. It was not difficult to have those conversations with Kevair. He hates losing more than anything. He’s raised this program.”

This summer, Morton-Rivera’s stock has risen exponentially. He is lean and can land shots from anywhere on the court. He said he has recently received offers from Temple, La Salle and Albany this summer. He is also speaking to Penn, Penn State and Princeton. He knew the year the last time Judge reached the Palestra and the last time the Crusaders won the Catholic League crown.

Morton-Rivera absorbed the experience of being at the Palestra.

“That was the first time a lot of us played in front of that many people,” Morton-Rivera recalled. “The attitude is not we think we can get to the Catholic League championship, it’s we are going to get there. I go back to the second quarter against Roman in that playoff game, and we panicked. They adjusted. We didn’t. We could not figure out how to score. We didn’t do what our coaches told us. We won’t freeze this year. I think that is what bothers me. We did not play (in the Catholic League semifinals) the way we are capable of playing.”

This version of the Father Judge team may get another chance in February.

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Joseph Santoliquito is an 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.