City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue
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NORTHEAST — Following a loss to Lansdale Catholic last week, two words were thrown around the La Salle College High School program: urgency and togetherness.

La Salle returned to the court Friday against Archbishop Ryan to begin a stretch of five games in 10 days and ready to treat them all like playoff games as they chase a spot in the Philadelphia Catholic League postseason.

After a week of battling each other in practice, the Explorers pulled together for a hard-fought 67-63 win over the Raiders that put them back in the right direction. Junior Max Okebata scored 19 points and senior Pat Flaherty scored 17 as all five La Salle starters scored eight-or-more points.

“We had a rough loss earlier in the week. We fought back,” junior Nick Neri said. “We’re working hard in practice and our coach just kept saying urgency and togetherness. I hold my team to a high standard, and I thought we started to bond on that court, started to feel comfortable and we just took over in the third quarter.”

La Salle (9-9, 4-5 PCL) and Ryan (6-12, 3-6) came into Friday’s contest tied for 9th in the PCL standings — the last two teams in the projected PCL playoff field. Both also entered slumping as of late with the Explorers losing four of five, including the loss to Lansdale Catholic last week, and the Raiders on a three-game skid.

Kaden Brown, who finished with 14 points, drilled one of two early triples a half minute into the game and Ryan never relinquished the lead in the first half, going up by as many as nine (19-10) before entering halftime with a 28-22 lead.

Flaherty hit a 3-point shot to start a 10-2 run for La Salle early in the third. Okebata capped the spurt to give the Explorers their first lead of the game, 32-31, with 3:45 left in the period. Okebata had seven and seniors Ryan Damon and Flaherty had six points apiece in the third as La Salle rallied to go up 44-37 heading into the fourth.

“Our mindset going into this game, we had to treat it like a playoff game,” Okebata said. “We had to come in here with a dog mentality, win every loose ball, win every 50-50 ball.”

Okebata had 13 of his 19 points after halftime and Damon scored all 10 of his after the break. They scored back-to-back buckets to push the La Salle lead to nine two minutes into the fourth.

The Explorers looked like they had the game in hand when Okebata put them back up nine, 52-43, with 5:14 to play. Brown answered with a four-point play that quickly got the Raiders back into the contest. Ryan chipped away until junior Jeremey Thompson, who sparked the Raiders with 17 points off the bench, tied the game 61-61 on a corner three with 1:36 to go.

That’s when the Explorers had to dig in again.

La Salle found its answer in Flaherty, who couldn’t get a floater to fall but corralled his own miss for a putback that gave the Explorers the lead back for good with 1:11 left. 

“After that LC loss, our coach was really harping on the fact that it was going to be a turning point for us and it turns out it was,” Flaherty said. “And I think it was mainly just our effort and our attitude.”

“It’s the effort that we hadn’t had in previous games. But in practice we fought really hard and translated into the game.”

Flaherty applauded the ball movement and off-ball motion from his teammates. Junior point guard Tyler Branson had four of his five assists in the big third quarter for the Explorers. He finished with 10 points, including seven in the fourth quarter when he went 5-of-6 from the foul line to help finish off the win. 

Neri had eight points but had his impact felt more in other avenues as he collected 10 rebounds and a pair of steals.

“This was a big collective effort,” Neri said. “We’ve gotta keep this going forward. ... I think this momentum will help through the weekend with practice and just keep bonding and I think we’ll be great moving forward.”

Ryan will try to end a four-game skid when it hosts Conwell-Egan on Sunday before traveling to Father Judge, Lansdale Catholic and St. Joe’s Prep to finish out its schedule. La Salle has back-to-back home games against St. Joe’s Prep and Neumann-Goretti on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, before finishing with Archbishop Wood and Roman Catholic.

Ten teams make the PCL playoffs with the top six advancing straight to the quarterfinals and the other four battling in the first round. If the season ended Friday night, Ryan and La Salle would still be in but both know there’s plenty of work still to do down the stretch.

“Our goal now is to go on a playoff run,” Okebata said. “Not a lot of people think we can, but I trust my team. I believe in my guys. I believe in our coaches that we can do what we do.”

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By Quarter

La Salle 10 | 11 | 22 | 24 || 67

Archbishop Ryan 13 | 15 | 9 | 26 || 63

Scoring

La Salle: Max Okebata 19, Pat Flaherty 17, Ryan Damon 10, Tyler Branson 10, Nick Neri 8, Pryce Alston 3.

Archbishop Ryan: Jeremy Thompson 17, Caden Brown 16, Malik Hughes 14, Isaiah Gore 12, Matt Johnson 2, Seth Gaye 2