City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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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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Jason Fisher has a fine line to walk at Devon Prep this year. 

It’s undeniable that the Tide’s longtime coach has a young and inexperienced group to work with following the graduation of an outstanding 2025 class, which took up the vast majority of the minutes and provided the vast majority of the production over the last two seasons. 

But it’s equally undeniable that the program is in a different place from the one it was when Zane Conlon, Reece Craft and Co. arrived at the school on the western part of the Main Line. In the last four years, Devon Prep has won three state championships: 3A crowns in 2022 and 2024 and the 4A title a year ago. 

That means the group taking over consists entirely of players who’ve joined a Catholic League program with high expectations year-in and year-out. That’s a far cry from the basketball afterthought that joined the league nearly a decade ago from the small-school Bicentennial, which was an easy win for just about everybody else in the PCL for its first few seasons.

“Before we started to get (the 2023 group) in, they’d always question what we were saying, but now they believe it,” Fisher told CoBL. “They know they can have success here and later when they get out of here by what we’re trying to instill in them.”

On the flip side, he cautioned: “I don’t want them to think that what happened in the past has anything to do with what happens right now.”

Devon Prep’s coming off its best basketball season in history, a 23-5 campaign that saw the Tide finish 11-2 in the PCL, earning the No. 3 seed in the league playoffs. They beat West Catholic in the quarterfinals to make it to the Palestra for the first time ever, then — after losing to Roman in the league semis — won their final six games of the year to capture both the District 12 and PIAA Class 4A crowns. 

Their top six scorers all graduated. Conlon (16.3 ppg, 9.0 rpg) is at the Hill School doing a post-graduate year. Craft (16.0 ppg, 7.5 rpg) is at Gettysburg, where he’s second on the Bullets in scoring despite coming off the bench. Mason Thear (10.7 ppg, 3.6 apg) is getting plenty of playing time at Montclair State and Shane Doyle (9.2 ppg, 5.8 apg) is at Catholic; Calvin Smith (9.5 ppg, 3.1 apg) isn’t playing college hoops and neither is reserve Mike Pergolis (1.9 ppg).

The only returning player who saw action in all 28 games last year is senior Braeden Fisher, a 6-foot-3 wing and the coach’s son, who averaged 1.7 ppg and 1.6 rpg last season. He’ll be counted on as a do-everything wing who might not lead the team in scoring but will stuff the stat sheet; that was clear in Devon Prep’s season opener, a 67-59 loss to Constitution on Monday, where he racked up seven rebounds, seven assists and five steals along with six points. 

The Tide’s brightest talent from an offensive perspective is junior wing Cooper Fairlamb. Standing about 6-4, Fairlamb has been on the varsity roster the last two years and shown flashes in blowout wins, but this summer he’s shown his versatility as a scorer and facilitator, able to create his own shot from inside and outside the arc. 

“Cooper needs to [...]  realize it’s not all on his shoulders, that he’s got teammates out there,” Fisher said. “He has to create for others, and he’ll get it, he’s never been in that role. And he’s only a junior.”

“it’s a lot different,” Fairlamb said. “Everybody’s got a different role than they did last year, and that can be a good thing, but it’s all going to just come with time.”

They’ll get strong outside shooting from junior guard Jaden Craft, a lanky 6-3 combo guard with quite a different game from his older brother Reese, a 6-7 forward. Jaden knocked down four 3-pointers as part of a 16-point, four-steal outing against Constitution. 

Senior guard Owen Raymond and junior guard John Doogan — whose sister Maggie, an O’Hara grad, is one of the nation’s top CBB players as a senior at Richmond — rounded out Monday’s starting lineup. Senior wing Jayden Allen-Bates,and sophomores James Kaune and Saeed Garrett rounded out the top eight, but junior guard Dillon Johnson made a big impact with 10 points in the fourth quarter, helping Devon Prep turn a 15-point gap into just four to put a real scare into Constitution in the game’s closing minutes. 

“We’re just super-passionate, we had some guys come off the bench and step up,” Fairlamb said. “I thought we played a good game, we just didn’t make a lot of our shots, so I think that’ll come.”

Fisher was similarly encouraged by that result and that comeback, thinking back to the way his 2025 class handled a similar transition into starting roles at the start of the 2023-24 season. 

“Our first game was out at Pittsburgh, Lincoln Park, and we got absolutely slaughtered, and the kids were scared to death to be on that floor,” Fisher said, recalling a 69-38 loss. “(Monday) night, they were nervous and they played with a different energy and fire than that group two years ago. 

“I’m more excited — I didn’t know what I would be, but it’s exciting.”