City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@owen.mccue)
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EAST FALLS — The goal for Ethan Johnston was to make a play.

Simple enough.

The play the Hill School 6-foot-6 guard made, however, was anything but.

Back pedaling towards his own hoop with one of the area’s best players driving toward him, Johnston found his footing to leap for a block that changed Friday night’s Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) semifinal game.

The stuff led to a Hill go ahead bucket on the other end and a 61-59 win for the No. 3 Blues over the No. 2 Quakers that sent Johnston and his team to the school’s first PAISAA championship game since 2018 on Sunday at Hagan Arena against Phelps School.

“That’s a hard play to describe,” Johnston said. “It was like slow motion. I was backpedaling. I wanted to make a big play for my team. I wanted to get a stop, and wanting to get a stop led to me punching it off the glass.”

Johnston finished with 17 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and two blocks for Hill School (25-7), which already set the program record for most wins. Senior point guard Jacob Meachem (Bucknell) had 18 points and five assists.

Meachem had a great view of what he called a “high-major” block by Johnston before securing the rebound and pushing the ball up the floor and toward the hoop.

The bucket didn’t fall, but senior Filippo Galli followed him down the court and tipped in the go ahead hoop for a 58-56 Hill lead with about a minute left.

“I saw Meach going on a fastbreak, and I said, ‘He’s going all the way.’ The only chance was a tip, and it went in so I’m happy,” said Galli, who joined the program from Cremonda, Italy this season.

Hill played from behind for most of Friday’s game. Quakers senior Jake West (Northwestern) had eight first-quarter points to put Penn Charter (24-5) up by as many as seven points in the period before finishing the first eight minutes of action with a 17-13 lead.

Minnesota-bound wing Kai Shinholster took over in the second with eight of his game-high 22 points (four threes) all in a row during a stretch that built the Quakers’ lead to nine. They went into half up 35-29.

A 10-2 run by the Blues to start the second half gave Hill its first lead, 39-37, since the early parts of the game with 4:40 left in the third. The teams stayed within a possession until a Shinholster triple sent PC into the fourth up 46-43, but Meachem quickly evened the score with an and-one to start the final quarter. He had eight in the fourth.

“It was all about getting stops and converting on the other side,” Meachem said about getting back into the game.

West, the Inter-Ac Player of the Year, finished with just 10 points after his hot start. He picked up his third foul with 7:04 to go in the third when Meachem took a charge. He was in and out of the game before picking up his fourth foul less than a minute into the fourth.

Penn Charter senior Jamal Hicks (St. Thomas Aquinas) had 13 points, and freshman Carter Smith provided a spark with six points to keep the Quakers, who were already without LSU-bound big man Matt GIlhool due to injury, afloat.

Hicks’ and-one with 3:12 left gave the Quakers a 54-50 lead before the Blues came back again to tie the game 56-56 at the 2:36 mark on a bucket by Galli, assisted by Johnston.

A block by Smith looked like it might be the game changing play when the 6-3 freshman stuffed a potential go-ahead dunk by Hill’s 6-10 forward Quadri Bashiru (Longwood), who had already flushed a few slams in the game. Instead it was Johnston’s swat a minute later that began the defining stretch of the game.

“Little plays like that help our team because some would say we’re undersized, but we’ve got a lot of heart, so we need big-time plays like that, and I think I came through,” Johnston said.

Hill came up with a stop and Galli secured the ensuing rebound after his go-ahead bucket. He hit a pair of free throws to put his team up 60-56 with 16.3 seconds left. Junior Dominic Comitale gave PC some late life when he drilled a three with 3.5 seconds left, pulling the Quakers within one.

They got the ball down two with 2.8 seconds left but the final shot, which was likely after the buzzer anyway, didn’t fall.

“Our guys have been a resilient bunch all year, and they really keep bearing down as the game goes,” Hill coach Seth Eilberg said. “We talk about keep getting better as the game goes, be mentally tough.”

The Blues reached the PAISAA semifinal round three times (2019, 2022, 2023) since their last state title in 2018 before breaking back through Friday night.

Sunday’s title game will be a rematch of their quarterfinal loss to Phelps last season.

Meachem is a Pottstown native who’s been around the program since about fourth grade, a season before the 2018 championship team. He can rattle off some of the names from that group like Chase Audige, Nick Alikakos, Xavier Mayo, Caleb and Gabe Dorsey.

He's excited to give the program another chance at a title.

“It means everything,” Meachem said. “Being here as a freshman and just seeing everything evolve and everything adapt from such a young age. Coming up now, I get the spotlight, i get to take care of the troops, I get to control everything. It’s awesome. It’s everything I wanted as a player, everything I wanted when I first came here to Hill.”

By Quarter

Hill School 13 | 16 | 14 | 18 || 61

Penn Charter 17 | 18 | 11 | 13 || 59

Scoring

Hill School: Jacob Meachem 18, Ehan Johnston 17, Filippo Galli 11, Quadri Bashiru 7, Caleb Jameson 6, Kessy Cox 2.

Penn Charter: Kai Shinholster 22, Jamal Hicks 13, Jake West 10, Carter Smith 6, Daniel Gilhool 3, Dominic Comitale 3, LJ Brown 2