City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)

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WYNDMOOR — Taylor Sweeney never won a thing during her playing time at Gwynedd Mercy Academy. The 2012 GMA graduate remembers many a sullen handshake line, and sometimes that last handshake would be with winning Villa Maria coaching legend Kathy McCartney.

Sweeney is in her first year as head coach of her alma mater. She inherited a good situation, with the Monarchs having four starters back on the defending Athletic Association of Catholic Academies (AACA) champions. She also had to navigate a tense situation, taking over late for the sudden dismissal of former coach Tom Lonergan in August and the departure of Emilia Coleman — last season’s AACA MVP — who transferred to Upper Dublin.

Sweeney has steered the Monarchs this season with aplomb. On Monday night at La Salle College High School, she has a chance to do something she never achieved as a player, and that’s win an AACA title.

GMA, the defending league champs, will take on Villa Maria Academy in a rematch of last year’s AACA championship.

The Monarchs arrived there thanks to a dominant 56-23 victory over Villa Joseph Marie in Saturday afternoon’s semifinals at La Salle College High School, fueled by the amazing play of 5-foot-7 junior guard Bailey Balkir, who scored a career-best 26 points.

Villa Maria arrived in the championship game staving off a late, furious rally by Mount Saint Joseph Academy, 53-45, courtesy of junior Sophia Tray and sophomore Rebecca Croft combining for 25 points, eight to stabilize a topsy-turvy fourth quarter.

Sweeney knew the sour taste of losing as a player. This season, she has more than compensated for that with winning, roaring through the AACA regular season undefeated, including sweeping Villa Maria by a combined 17 points.  

“This is really exciting, and Villa Maria is very good, and they have a very, very good head coach (McCartney),” Sweeney said. “I’ll be completely frank, this is my first championship game as a coach, and first championship game ever. I never played in a championship game when I was at Gwynedd. We can’t take any team lightly, even if we beat them twice.

“I remember meeting coach McCartney the first time this year and telling her I played against her when I was in high school. I told her the girls I graduated with in high school. I never beat her. Never beat her as a player. I can’t say good enough things about my team, and I have the utmost respect for coach McCarney.”

Sweeney implemented a new system this season that took some time in which to adapt. She came from Gwynedd Mercy University, where she was an assistant coach for two years under women’s head coach Keith Mondillo. The system was difficult to fully grasp there. She knew she would have to be patient at the high school level, installing pieces in at a time.

There was quite a bit of buy in by the players.

It is a taxing system that is a grind physically. Sweeney says there is about 80-percent of the system fully in. The pressing system 1-2-2 diamond, headed by the 5-foot-11 Cara Lapp, who has a 6-foot-5 wingspan, forces teams to speed up and lose composure.

This plays into the incredibly athletic Balkir, who has to be a considerable favorite as AACA MVP this season, swooping in and scooping up errant passes for layups.

“We have proved we can beat every team in the league, but beating anyone three times is a challenge,” Balkir said of facing Villa Maria a third time. “We know we have a big target on our backs winning games the way we have. We can’t let up. That’s our biggest challenge. What I really liked today was our press. When we push up and put on the intensity, no one can get by that. We have Cara Lapp, we have (5-10) Megan McDonnell, they cause problems with their length for everyone.”  

Balkir causes problems everywhere else. She was easily the best player on the court in both semifinal games. She showed great diversity in rebounding, ballhandling, running the Monarch offense, and her speed makes it problematic for any opposing team to stay with.

She was GMA’s Energizer Bunny in a bouncing, blonde ponytail. Following the bouncing ponytail seemed impossible for Villa Joseph Marie. She had 21 of GMA’s first 39 points. With the game well decided, because of Balkir, Sweeney took her out with 1:40 left in the third quarter. But Balkir got a special reprieve when Sweeney sent her back in so she could reach her career-high 26 early in the fourth quarter.

“If I could have 10 of Bailey, I would every day,” Sweeney said. “No one works harder. She attacks people and no one can keep up with her.”

By Quarter
Villa Joseph Marie (10-13): 6 | 4 | 7 | 6 || 23
Gwynedd Mercy Academy (20-2): 14 | 21 | 13 | 8 || 56

Scoring

Villa Joseph Marie: Avery Akright 7, Grace Pizzica 7, Riley Deal 5, Lucy Jasionis 4.

Gwynedd Mercy Academy: Bailey Balkir 26, Brooke Evans 6, Cara Lapp 5, Megan McDonnell 4, Riley Bazela 4, Chloe McCarthy 4, Carsy Kelly 3, Shiloh Okiro 2, Carli Amos 2.

Villa Maria holds off late Mount St. Joseph’s push to reach AACA finals

It happens with rival teams in the same league, and it gets magnified especially when those teams play three times, as Villa Maria and Mount St. Joseph has this year.  

Mount St. Joseph looked all but sunk after three quarters, trailing 36-21, but something drastically changed at the start of the fourth quarter. The Magic, spurred by junior guard Morgan Cross’ game-high 16 points, 13 coming in the fourth quarter, suddenly made a game of it.

“We wanted to win that game,” Cross said. “Going into the fourth quarter, we realized it was all or nothing.”

Down 41-21 with 7:00 left to play, Mount St. Joseph pulled to within 45-36 with 4:02 left to play. It was Tray and Croft that led the Hurricanes to regaining their composure. Croft’s three-point play, with 4:02 to play, put Villa Maria back up by 11.

The teams split during the regular season, with Villa Maria barely beating Mount, 34-30, on February 4.

“We all of a sudden just got tight,” McCartney said. “I have a lot of young kids on the floor, freshmen and sophomores, and I think they looked up at the scoreboard and thought, ‘Oh my God, we’re up by 20, I hope we don’t blow this.’ That’s the mentality. It’s why I said to them, ‘Let’s finish this.’

“But Mount did a great job coming back. I told my kids there is no quit in Mount. It’s very hard beating a team you play three times. The last time we won a (AACA) championship was two years ago. We’re hungry for another one.”

The Mount players took the setback hard. The loss may have ended the season for the Magic, who hung perilously close of not qualifying for the 12th and final playoff berth in the PIAA District 1 Class 5A playoffs entering the game as the No. 13th-rated team, percentage points behind the Central League’s Harriton.

Mount coach Matt Feeney saw his team go out on its shield. He waited to pull the trigger on the press in the fourth quarter, conserving his players’ energy for late.  

“The problem we had was digging ourselves a 20-point hole, and we gave them some easy buckets,” Feeney said. “We gave them too much of a cushion. If we had less of a cushion to dig out from, we maybe have a different outcome.

“We shared the ball better in the fourth quarter and Morgan is a special player. This was a very close team. These girls genuinely like each other. This game came down to who executed better. There were no secrets between us. These girls took it hard. We challenged them in the huddle and they responded. Credit to Villa. This team wants to keep playing together, and it’s been a great team to coach. I hope to be coaching them another couple of weeks.”    

Villa Maria, meanwhile, had two pillars to rely on in the end—Tray and Croft.

“We knew it would be hard to beat them again, because they beat us the first time in overtime,” Croft said. “In that fourth quarter, we took our foot off the pedal a little. We just kept pushing.”

Said Tray, who will be going to Loyola for lacrosse, “You play someone three times, there is no hiding anything. Our team never gives up, and that was shown this whole season. This is a semifinal game and we did rush a little there in the fourth quarter. Our coach told us during a timeout that if we wanted this, and we had to show it. In the fourth quarter, we showed the confidence we had in ourselves.”

By Quarter
Mount St. Joseph (9-13): 3  |   7   |  11  |  24  || 45

Villa Maria (12-11):  11 |  7  |  18  |  17  ||  53

Scoring
Mount St. Joseph’s: Morgan Cross 16, Caitlin Cavallaro 13, Carly Derouin 10, Caroline Dougherty 4, Bridget Horgan 2.

Villa Maria: Sophia Tray 14, Rebecca Craft 11, Briella Romeo 8, Anna Vickers 7, Abby Ferry 5, Ava Broadhurst 4, Erin Urbanski 4.

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.