City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Dan Marsh broke his own rule. 

The second-year Abington boys’ coach, previously its longtime girls coach, brought up an old sports cliché before his team took on Cheltenham on Saturday afternoon. 

“I don’t ever say that ‘this is a must-win,’” he said, “but the way that we’d been playing, I felt like this was a must-win.”

The Ghosts were less than 24 hours removed from a 29-point loss at the hands of Suburban One League favorite Upper Dublin, in danger of a third loss in four games at the hands of a quality Panthers squad. That’s a slide in the wrong direction with the postseason hurdling closer. 

And though Abington hung on the brink of defeat in both regulation and overtime, Ghosts senior Jake Manigault and sophomore Xander Grasty came up with big plays at clutch times to flip the script right at the end, delivering a 60-58 win over the Panthers in the opening game of a boy-girl doubleheader.

“It’s classic Cheltenham-Abington,” Marsh said of the two rival schools, located less than three miles apart, Cheltenham’s Rice’s Mill Road becoming Abington’s Highland Avenue midway between the pair. “Incredible that we were able to persevere and pull it out. I’m really happy for our guys for being able to do that. It was sloppy, up-and-down, both teams had their chances.”

It was a back-and-forth game that saw Cheltenham’s six-point halftime edge erased by the end of the third quarter and the lead exchanged numerous times in the first half of the fourth quarter. The host Panthers had a chance to win it in regulation, up three points with under two minutes to play on a put-back layup by Xavier Willougby. But Abington’s Paul Glants hit the first big shot for the Ghosts, a 3-pointer that bounced high off the rim before dropping straight through the net with 90 seconds to play in regulation, tying it at 55. 

That was the same score heading into overtime, Cheltenham missing a 3-pointer with 30 seconds left in regulation before Abington traveled with two seconds on the clock. The Panthers once again took a three-point lead in the extra session, Kamal Mason getting a transition bucket with 2:35 left before Justin Ezeukwu split a pair of foul shots with 1:04 to go. 

Abington didn’t flinch.

“We always got to keep our heads up,” Manigault said. “We know we have time, one-possession game or a two-possession game with a minute left, we know we have plays drawn up for situations like that. So we were on the same page, we knew what we were going to run and just had to keep our head up and keep playing until the clock hits zero.”

Grasty, the Ghosts’ 5-foot-8 sophomore point guard and son of Abington athletic director/former head coach Charles Grasty, got things tied up almost instantly, getting past his defender off the bounce on a spin move and finishing with a left-hand layup and-one, the foul shot tying it up with 40.7 seconds remaining. 

After another missed Cheltenham shot, Maingault capped off a 21-point outing with a put-back bucket off a missed corner 3-pointer from junior Faizon Garland, gathering up a loose ball and calmly depositing it home with less than five seconds remaining. 

“I know that the corner’s his shot, so I’m expecting him to go in, but it’s crunch time so we’ve got to crash the rebounds,” said Manigault, who finished three points shy of his season high. “I start crashing and I see the ball is loose, and Xander is going for it, so it just kind of fell in my hands, so I went down, got it, and laid it up.”

“It’s just bang-bang-bang, never nervous, nothing to be nervous about,” he added. 

With the win, Abington (12-6) vaulted from No. 14 to No. 10 in the unofficial District 1 6A rankings, two behind Cheltenham (12-5). Those rankings are important not just because they determine the district bracket — the top eight seeds get a bye to the second round, seeds 9-16 hosting seeds 17-24 in the opening round — but also because they determine who fills out the Suburban One League tournament behind the four division winners. 

At 4-3 in the SOL-Liberty standings, behind Upper Dublin (18-1, 7-0) and Plymouth Whitemarsh (15-4, 6-1), Abington will have to rely on those district rankings to make the league playoffs. Currently, only six SOL teams are in the top 16, which puts Abington in a good spot at the moment. But the Ghosts have a tough finish: at Wissahickon, at home against Plymouth Whitemarsh, at Bensalem and at Quakertown.

“If we (lost) this one, we don’t have any easy games left,” Marsh said. “[It’s] all these inter-conference games that are really difficult. So we needed [this win] today. That’s what we were focusing on, that’s why I said it was a must-win — as a coach you hate to say that, but it was.”

~~~

By Quarter
Cheltenham: 21  |  14  |   8   |  12  |   3   ||  58
Abington:      18  |  11  |  16  |  10  |   5   ||  60

Shooting
Cheltenham: 17-45 FG (5-19 3PT), 19-26 FT
Abington: 19-42 FG (7-15 3PT), 15-19 FT

Scoring
Cheltenham: Kamal Mason 11, Osai Johnson 10, Justin Ezeukwu 10, Tyree Martin 8, Xavier Willoughby 8, Kendall Jackson 6, Salim Kelly 5

Abington: Jake Manigault 21, Xander Grasty 17, Zion Hospedales 8, Paul Glants 7, Faizon Garland 5, Kyler Pickron 2

~~~

Thompson dominates glass as Cheltenham girls keep chugging along

As the Cheltenham girls’ resurgence continues under first-year head coach Monique Boykins, the Panthers knocked off another major milestone on Saturday. 

A 57-49 win over Abington was the first time that Cheltenham had beaten its rival since January 21, 2012. In that one, future St. Joe’s guard and eventual PIAA State Player of the Year Ciara Andrews scored 29 points in a 71-61 victory. 

“Whatever Cheltenham they knew last year, this is a different team,” Boykins said. “We’re more disciplined, we’re focused, and we don’t take any team that we play, we don’t take anybody lightly.”

In addition to breaking a 13-year winless streak, Cheltenahm’s victory was its sixth in a row as it now has three wins more than its total last year (14-2, 7-0 SOL-Freedom), an eight-year streak of postseason-less play almost certainly coming to an end this February. 

Junior forward Zoe Thompson put together a monster double-double with 15 points and 24 rebounds. The 6-foot-tall forward picked up eight of those on the offensive end as she dominated the glass all game long, while also doing a great job of scoring inside and getting to the foul line (9-12 FT). 

Thompson’s return has no doubt been a boost, as she spent her sophomore year at SCH Academy after starting off as a freshman at Cheltenham. 

“Our first day of practice, my first time seeing her [...] I identified it early, I knew she was the piece that we needed to close everything,” Boykins said. “She’s aggressive on the boards, but once she does get the board, she knows her way around the basket to put it back in.”

Thompson led a balanced offensive output. Senior guard Jiah Price and junior wing Maya Simmons each scored 14, Price adding seven rebounds of her own to the tally. Junior guard Paige Powell rounded out the quartet in double figures with 11 of her own plus three rebounds, three steals and two assists. Senior forward Cassie Bugg added to the rebound domination with nine more.

That was enough to offset a 23-point outing from Abington junior Mikiaya Durham, who hit five 3-pointers and got fouled shooting two others. 

Neither team shot it well, but Cheltenham continually built its lead from five points after one guard to double-digits early in the second half, holding its visitors at arms’ length the entire way home. 

“The biggest thing is patience and poise, patience and poise, and that’s something I talked to the girls about,” Boykins said. “I feel like today, it was a good win for us but it was an ugly win. I felt like we have to capitalize off their mistakes more, the girls definitely held it together, they definitely worked together with one another.”

Before Saturday’s result hit the District 1 page, the Panthers were currently the No. 8 team in the district rankings, though they also didn’t have a December win over Eastside Paterson (N.J.) factored in, both of which are likely to provide a little bump in the formula. Cheltenham still has five games left in the regular season, including a tough trip to New Hope-Solebury on Jan. 31. But a top-eight finish and spot in the second round of the district playoffs — one win shy of states — is very much at play.

“I want people to know we’re coming,” Boykins said, though she edited herself by text afterwards: “I don’t want to say we’re coming — I want people to know WE ARE HERE!”

By Quarter
Cheltenham:  17  |  13  |  16  |  11  ||  57
Abington:       12  |  10  |  12  |  15  ||  49

Shooting
Cheltenham: 17-51 FG (2-11 3PT), 21-28 FT
Abington: 16-68 FG (7-26 3PT), 10-15 FT

Scoring
Cheltenham: Zoe Thompson 15, Maya Simmons 14, Jiah Price 14, Paige Powell 11, Cassie Bugg 3

Abington: Mikiaya Durham 23, Aniyah Williams 15, Maya Johnson 7, Shya Craften 3, Hailey Hernandez 1