City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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For three years, Haley Prophet, Kareena Preuss and the rest of Spring-Ford’s seniors followed the lead of Anna Azzara, Mac Pettinelli and the Rams’ other 2024 grads. 

Now that it’s their turn, in the home stretch of their high school hoops careers, they don’t want to waste any opportunities. That includes a chance to make some postseason memories — starting with the Pioneer Athletic Conference playoffs.

With Prophet and Pruess leading the way, third-seeded Spring-Ford closed strong on Wednesday evening in the opening round of the PAC postseason, taking down sixth-seeded Methacton 50-40. 

“It makes it a hundred times more special [being seniors],” Pruess said, “especially because this could be it for us. We’re playing every game like it’s our last game, so we have to push each other and stay together if we want to keep going.”

Pruess, who starts for Mickey McDaniel’s Rams (17-6), and Prophet, who comes off the bench, both scored 13 points in the win, which moves Spring-Ford into a semifinal against Pope John Paul II on Saturday. 

For Preuss to lead the team in scoring isn’t anything new; the 5-foot-11 wing has done that much of the season, her seven rebounds and three assists also a fairly typical output for the second-year starter. Prophet’s re-finding her confidence of late, a good sign for a team that wants to make a District 1 6A run. She hit a game-tying buzzer-beating 3-pointer several weeks back in a non-league game against Springfield (Delco.) in a game Spring-Ford won in overtime, which has been a spark for her later in the season.

Prophet knocked down just one 3-pointer against Methacton on a night where both teams struggled from deep, but she hit a couple mid-range jumpers and a couple layups while knocking down both of her foul shots.

“It’s definitely been a big confidence booster,” she said of the Springfield shot, “but my teammates really get my confidence going and help me in the games to keep shooting, and it helps me in games like tonight to hit shots.”

Methacton star Abby Arnold, who led the Warriors with 15 points, scored seven straight for her side to open the fourth quarter, putting them up 40-36 with 5:23 left. They didn’t score again. 

Spring-Ford closed on a 14-0 run, forcing Methacton to miss its final six shots and a pair of free-throws along the way. Prophet got the run started with a bucket in the lane, and sophomore Emma Kaercher tied it up.

Preuss provided the final lead change of the evening on a 3-point play with 2:45 left, making it 43-40. That helped make up for an earlier layup through contact which could have gone either way, though the whistle went against the Spring-Ford senior. 

“It mattered more then, anyways,” Pruess said of the three-point play that counted. “I was just kind of annoyed about the first call.”

It was a closing run that would make Azzara (Wright State), Pettinelli (St. Bonaventure) and Co. proud, the Rams' Class of 2025 showing the lessons it learned from watching their predecessors lead the way on several deep postseason runs. 

“I think we have been in positions like that but I think we definitely try not to panic too much because that can get in our heads," Propher said. "We definitely do a good job [...] calming each other down, making sure we stay together and that’s the most important thing, playing as a team.”

The Rams closed out the game at the line, splitting a number of attempts before Kaercher connected on two with 29 seconds remaining to make it 49-40. The sophomore guard, the only non-senior in the starting lineup, added six rebounds, three steals and two assists to her eight points.

Spring-Ford and Pope John Paul already played once this season, a 52-21 Spring-Ford win at PJP on Jan. 7. The Golden Panthers (17-5) captured the Frontier division title (10-0) but struggled against the bigger schools in the Liberty division. 

“They’re definitely a good team,” Pruess said. “I think as long as we play together, we can do what we know we can do.”

By Quarter
Spring-Ford: 12  |  14  |   9   |  15  ||  50
Methacton:    8   |  12  |  14  |   7   ||  40

Shooting
Spring-Ford: 15-39 FG (3-18 3PT), 17-27 FT
Methacton: 14-37 FG (4-17 3PT), 8-12 FT

Scoring
Spring-Ford: Kareena Preuss 13, Haley Prophet 13, Emma Kaercher 8, Miley Maloney 7, Devon Chamberlain 5, Christina Tiffan 4

Methacton: Abby Arnold 15, Ava Wolf 8, Lila Cingiser 8, Jenna Kaufman 4, Penny Wolf 3, Sydney Hockenbrock 2

~~~

Boys: Baratta powers Phoenixville past Owen J. Roberts

It wasn’t just a dunk. 

When Deacon Baratta turned the corner midway through the third quarter, the Phoenixville senior without an Owen J. Roberts defender in front of him, he took one left-handed dribble and rose up with authority, tongue out, and threw down a slam. 

“I was angry at that point,” he said. “I saw the rim, didn’t want a chance for another charge [...] so I just dunked it.”

“That dunk, that really got us going,” sophomore Jacoby Smith said. “He dunks it, but he has some anger on that. That played a big role in the second half.”

Baratta’s emphatic dunk was the highlight of an impressive second half for the Tufts commit and the Phantoms as a whole, Phoenixville overcoming a slow start to run past OJR 71-46 in its opening-round game. 

The defending Pioneer Athletic champs found themselves in an 18-4 hole early in the second quarter thanks to the sharpshooting of Wildcats junior Danny Walker, who hit five 3-pointers in the first half, each one seemingly from deeper than the one before it. Things especially didn’t look good when Baratta picked up his second foul on the offensive end with 4:29 until half, on a night when starting guard Keron Booth (wrist) remained sidelined. 

But Smith (14 points) and senior Trey Lear (13 points) kept Phoenixville in it, pulling them back to within 26-22 by halftime as the pair combined for 13 points in the second quarter. And when Baratta re-took the court to start the third quarter, he was a whole new player. 

The 6-foot-5 wing absolutely took over in the third quarter, missing his first shot but hitting his next seven as he scored 16 of his game-high 27 points during an eight minutes that flipped it from a close game to a downhill runaway. 

Phoenixville led 47-36 going into the fourth and kept the pedal on the gas, Baratta adding a driving layup, a pull-up jumper and a 3-point play while the rest of the Phoenixville rotation chipped in. 

All-in-all, the Phantoms (17-6) shot 20-of-24 in the second half, 28-of-37 in the last three quarters overall. 

Though Booth, Phoenixville’s best ball-handler and one of its leading scorers, was out, he still came up with an assist. Smith gave his classmate credit for a pregame pep talk that helped him have one of the best games of his young career, the 6-3 guard going 7-of-9 from the floor, slicing to the hoop time and again throughout the Phantoms’ comeback. 

“Keron being out hurts us a lot, but he’s the one who got me in there, got me locked in, started the game for me,” Smith said. “He just told me to take everything strong, past few games have been rough for me, so he just told me when I got in it was my time, take advantage of it.”

In the semifinals, Phoenixville will take on Spring-Ford, playing the conference’s No. 2 seed on its home court at 3 PM. Pottsgrove will play Pope John Paul II in the other semifinal on Thursday, Feb. 6 at Perkiomen Valley. 

“We know we’re built for this moment,” Baratta said. “Last year, we had all these guys come together and we know if we did it last year, we can do it again this year. So we just had that confidence.”

By Quarter
PHS:   4   |  18  |  25  |  24  ||  71
OJR:  15  |  11  |  10  |  10  ||  48

Shooting
PHS: 30-47 FG (6-15 3PT), 5-11 FT
OJR: 16-47 FG (7-22 3PT), 7-11 FT

Scoring
PHS: Deacon Baratta 27, Jacoby Smith 14, Trey Lear 13, Stephen Yurick 9, Brady O’Donnell 4, Ashton Alexander 2

OJR: Danny Walker 17, Gavin Winnick 12, Elijah Cline 7, Ryan Simpson 4, Ryan Holmburg 3, Elijah Wilson 3