City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)

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PHILADELPHIA — Rob Sukaly taps his forehead with his index finger and grins. He knows his weakness intimately—too intimately. It tends to sporadically get in the way of the 6-foot-4 Dock Mennonite senior forward. He can’t help himself. His mental flow is unimpeded. His shot is in rhythmic form. He knows where the ball will splash as soon as it rolls off his fingertips.

Then, the problem arises. It’s about the only drawback he has. He just can’t escape it. He begins to think. That, he admits with a laugh, is his issue.

Sukaly did not do too much thinking Wednesday night, when he dropped a career-best 29 points in a highly impressive performance in leading Dock Mennonite to a 66-54 Bicentennial League victory over a good Phil-Mont Christian squad at Phil-Mont.

The Pioneers, who reached the PIAA Class 2A quarterfinals last year, are flying under the radar so far early this season with a 5-1 overall record, which includes an impressive win over 6A school North Allegheny, and 4-0 in the Bicentennial, while Phil-Mont dropped to 6-2 and 3-2 in the Bicentennial.

Sukaly got some help, getting 12 from Marques Brown and eight from Tony Martin, while the Falcons were led by a team-high 19 from Kendall Bratten, 14 from Malik Minor and 11 from Jameer Zachary.

Sukaly’s 29-point effort was 16 points higher than his 13-point average. He exceeded that in the third quarter alone, scoring 14 of the Pioneers’ 19 points on 7 of 9 shooting.

“When I’m just playing and being relaxed, not getting into my own head, that’s when I play games like this,” Sukaly said. “I think too much (laughs). I get in my own way, and I’m the hardest on myself all the time. I just played and was having fun. I just let it go. I works when I see myself making shots or just playing without thinking about anything at all. I’ll remember this game and know I can’t get into my head, move forward and don’t get stuck play-to-play.”

With Sukaly playing like that, with the defense that Pioneers’ coach Mike Fergus stresses, Dock Mennonite can once again be a player this coming March in the run for a PIAA Class 2A state championship.

The Pioneers are normally a balanced-scoring team. But when Sukaly gets hot, watch out. Aside from Sukaly, Dock’s pressure caused 26 turnovers.

“We pride ourselves on our defense and this is basically a new team, Robby had to sit out the postseason last year because of transferring,” said Fergus, whose team has won 25 games the previous two years. “We have good players, but we have to jell. Tonight was a big win for us, against a good team on the road. We’re an unselfish team. We have good depth; we have some length.

“This is a hard place to play and (Phil-Mont) coach (Glenn) Dolton does a really good job.”

There were five lead changes in the first half before Sukaly and Dock took over in the third quarter. Sukaly scored the first 10 points in the quarter, as the Pioneers began putting some distance between themselves and Phil-Mont, entering the fourth quarter with a 51-41 lead.

“Not a lot of people expected us to be who we are,” Martin said. “Our experience speaks for itself. I could have played better. I will take that on the chin and get back. We are all here for each other, and we have players like Rob, Marques and Justin (Panaia). We still have some things to figure out. I need to stay locked in and be a better leader.”

Dock led by as much as 59-42 with 5:35 to play. But Phil-Mont was not willing to fold. The Falcons chipped away, and chipped away, mostly through the 6-foot-6 Bratten.

With 3:36 left, after a Bratten layup, Phil-Mont was within 59-50. That’s when Martin drove the lane and bumped the Pioneers’ edge back up to double digits again, 61-50, with 2:25 left.

Entering the game, turnovers were a concern for Dolton. The Falcons’ turnovers were predominantly on live balls, while the times Dock lost the ball came mostly on errant passes or deflected balls out of bounds.

“Honestly, if we didn’t give up so many opportunities, and we cut our 26 turnovers to 13, we would have knocked 10, maybe 15 points off their score,” Dolton said. “We can turn people over; we just shoot ourselves in the foot with our turnovers. We got what we wanted. We just gave up way too many possessions.”

Sukaly topped Phil-Mont’s scouting report in its matchup zone. The Falcons were stung by the times they lost him on the baseline.

“I loved how hard our guys played,” Dolton said. “I love our team. My takeaway is we have to find a way to take care of the ball better. Many of them were unforced turnovers. We need to focus on watching film and slowing things down. These things are correctable.   

“How far we go and how well we do this year will come down to how well we take care of the ball. These are things we can fix.”  

By Quarter

Dock Mennonite (5-1, 4-0 Bicentennial League): 13 | 19 | 19 | 15 ||  66
Phil-Mont Christian (6-2, 3-2 Bicentennial League):  14 | 16  |  11  | 13 ||  54

Scoring
Dock Mennonite: Rob Sukaly 29, Marques Brown 12, Tony Martin 8, Justin Panaia 7, Xavier Mitchell 6, Koby Rollerson 2, Ethan Kratz 2.

Phil-Mont Christian: Kendall Bratten 19, Malik Minor 14, Jameer Zachary 11, Julian Sheppard 5, Ethan Giddens 3, Titus Waggoner 2.

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 BlueSky here.