City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2025-26 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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Eight months later, and it still collectively gnaws at them. Perhaps no team in the area enters this season more motivated than the Penncrest boys’ basketball team.

The Lions were so agonizingly close to reaching the PIAA Class 5A state semifinals, up eight late in the fourth quarter and winning by five in the last 31 seconds to eventual state champion Neumann-Goretti when everything collapsed in overtime. Two weeks prior, Penncrest was up by 10 in the District 1 Class 5A quarterfinals to eventual district finalist Holy Ghost Prep and fell.

“You don’t forget games like that,” said Penncrest returning 6-foot-7 senior star Mikey Mita, who is committed to high-end academic Carnegie Mellon. “We return pretty much our whole team from last year, and we have the pieces to beat any team in the area. We need to handle pressure better. Those games last year haunt me. I remember everyone congratulating us on what we did and how far we went. To me, we did not walk away with anything besides a participation award. We didn’t win anything. That’s what bothers me. There is no room for error this year.

“We have the coaching. We have the talent. We can deal with the pressure of a game. We have an amazing offense. This is my fourth year here. I want to leave my high school career with something, I want to leave with a championship. We are a hungry, determined team.”

As soon as last season wrapped up, the Lions, who finished 23-4 last season, did not immediately return to the court. Their first destination was the weight room. Led by Mita, who now weighs 215 up from 190 last season, and coaching legend Mike Doyle, Penncrest is a loaded team that will be among the best Class 5A teams in the state. It will be one of Doyle’s deepest teams in his tenure at Penncrest, which returns 6-foot senior guard Will Stanton, 6-foot senior guard Connor Cahill, who scored 19 in the state quarterfinals, 6-3 senior forward Ryan McKee, 6-1 senior guard Sean Benson, 5-foot-10 senior guard Jeff Cropper, 5-foot-11 senior guard Andrew Heisserman, and 6-1 senior guard Paul Graham, and a pair of impacting forwards in 6-4 sophomores Finley Lester and Orion Kolleh.

“We know we have high expectations and lot of our team is still playing football. We’ll have to put this together fast, since we have a monster schedule ahead of us,” said Doyle, who will enter his 23rd year at Penncrest, where he won consecutive District 1 Class 5A titles in 2017 and 2018. “We play Parkland, Riverside, Bonner-Prendie, and Timber Creek. And then you’re dealing with Conestoga, which won the District 1 (Class 6A) championship, and Gregg (Downer) and Lower Merion are always good.

"I started with this group as freshmen. Rarely in high school basketball do you have a group that have stayed together this long. We did lose our best 3-point shooter, Theo Gladue, who is at DeSales University. These guys were all at my basketball camp when they were second-graders.

“These guys have been together for a decade. This could be one of my teams ever. This team has the most potential. These guys are all coachable. They are all accountable. They are high-class kids that is good to see in this day and age. I’m grateful to coach kids who have such a passion.”

Penncrest will win with defense. Doyle, a defensive mad scientist as one of his coaching brethren referred to him as, will throw every conceivable defense at an opponent, from the 1-3-1 he threw at Neumann-Goretti in the state quarters, to man defense, to zone traps, to a full-court press.

What’s more, with a team that can go nine or 10 deep, the Lions will have the depth to do it.

After beating Penncrest, 76-69 in overtime, Neumann-Goretti beat its next two opponents by an average of 15 points. The Lions had Neumann-Goretti down, 63-58, with 31 seconds left before the Saints’ DeShawn Yates put on some late-game heroics.

Cahill feels the experience of the deep playoff run adds experience to this team.

“We came into last year really confident, thinking we could win the Central League, District 1 and state championship,” Cahill said. “We didn’t. But we gained from it. We know what it is like to play at that level. We have nine guys who can play—and they are just the seniors. We missed everyone this summer who are on the football team. Once those guys come back, we’ll be even better. When we have everyone, we can be a scary team. I liked how we played this summer when we had everyone. One of the big keys this offseason was hitting the weight room.”

Added Stanton, “I think we got tired of people pushing us around. It’s why we hit the weight room over the summer. Mikey is right. We’re not doing this for a participation trophy. We know we fell short last year. It’s why we are coming into this year with different energy. I put on 15 pounds since last year. We are bigger and stronger than a year ago. One of our main problems last year was we were small and scared. We’re not this year. We decided to do something about it. Our skill level is up there with anyone. Being bigger and stronger, it will translate on the court.”

Mita, Cahill and Stanton each stressed the pressure to succeed comes from within. They each said with Doyle, they are able to shut off the outside noise.

Regardless, Penncrest finds itself a target—a huge target, and they know that, too.

“I hope we get everyone’s best, it shows respect, and this year is about winning something,” Mita said. “We have experience back. This is our best chance to win something. We faced adversity last year. I don’t expect us to win something this year, I demand we do. For the seniors, our high school careers will not be complete unless we win a Central League, a district or state title. We have the team to do it.”

Entering this season, many would agree.    

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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.