City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)

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DREXEL HILL, PA — No one said anything on the drive home last Friday night. Korey Francis sat in the passenger’s seat expecting his father, Keefer, to unload on him after Bonner-Prendie lost to Archbishop Wood. Instead, Keefer said nothing. He thought Korey played well, dropping 31 points, including his career 1,000th point. The problem Korey had was he thought he did not play well.

He sat there in the dark, shedding a few tears, numb, feeling he let his teammates and his coaches down in a critical Catholic League game—and vowing he would not do that again.

Korey’s get-back chance came Monday night. Someone was going to have to pay for his displaced frustration with himself, and that happened to be Roman Catholic.

The 6-foot-4 junior guard dropped a game-high 28 points on the Cahillites in leading Bonner-Prendie to a highly impressive start-to-finish 71-59 Philadelphia Catholic League victory at jam-packed Bonner-Prendie.

The Friars now hold sole possession of second place in the PCL with an 8-3 mark (15-5 overall), holding the head-to-head tiebreaker over Roman Catholic, which is also 8-3 in the Catholic League (13-7), with each team two games behind PCL-leading 10-1 Archbishop Wood, which has beaten Roman, Bonner-Prendie and Neumann-Goretti this season.

Francis made another strong bid as PCL MVP in the dominant way he played. This came following his 31-point performance on Friday night against Wood—the game he felt he played poorly.

Above all Monday night, Korey Francis waged an internal battle with himself. He had to exorcize his personal demon of the previous game—which, again, was a 31-point game against the No. 1 team in the Catholic League.

“What bothered me about that Wood game was that I felt like I did not give it my all, and sometimes you have to realistic and honest with yourself, and it hurts me to say that,” Francis admitted. “The car ride home was rough. My dad didn’t yell at me. Most of the time, I’m going to hear it from him, and most of the time he’s right. He thought I played well. I didn’t. I cried on the way home. I was that angry at myself.

“It’s been a while since I had a car ride home like that. I think it goes back probably to our loss to Wood in the Catholic League playoffs last year that I felt like that. I scored 31 (Friday night). It didn’t matter. I scored my 1,000 th point. I didn’t care about that, either. I wanted to win. This team relies on me and I felt like I let everyone down. I had to make up for that.”

He certainly did.

Francis was the proverbial bull in a China shop, putting his head down and plowing through the Roman defense like a fullback. He scored six of the Friars’ first 12 points. He collected rebounds, ran some point, at 6-foot-4, 190 pounds, he played strong interior defense. The Friars are a thunder-and-lightning squad, filled with tiny, quick guards that make the lightning, and on Francis’ broad shoulders lies the thunder.

He may do more overall things for the Friars than any star player does for their respective team in the Catholic League.

“We 100-percent have the Catholic League MVP on this team,” Bonner-Prendie coach Billy Cassidy said about Francis. “We all want to win and Korey takes losing hard. He treats himself like a professional. He even watches his diet as a high school junior. I liked our toughness and effort on every play. We’re digging down and trying to grind out every play possible.”

Bonner-Prendie was 21 for 29 from the free-throw line against Wood, and were 18 of 26 at the line against Roman. The Friars were, however, sharp from the floor against the Cahillites, making 23 of 38 (60.5%), which included seven three-pointers.

Sammy Jackson led Roman with 17, though was held scoreless in the fourth quarter, much of it the work of behind-the-curtain star 6-1 junior Jakeem Carroll, who annoyed Jackson and earlier this season shutdown Coatesville’s stellar sophomore, Colton Hiller.

The Friars’ plan was to double-team Roman’s quicksilver senior guard RJ Smith every time he touched the ball, causing the Cahillites to speed up. Carroll, Kam Jackson and DeShaun Holden were in attack mode offensively.

They took their cue from Francis, who played through contact, getting four chances to close three-point plays.

“The goal was to blitz RJ off the ball screens, and we know he is a great player who we wanted to make things difficult for, and with Sammy down in the post, we wanted to do the same thing,” Jackson said. “With Korey, he is about the team and winning. He brought up the ball, rebounded, played inside defense, he does it all for us. This win will build our momentum.”

Roman Catholic never led. Bonner-Prendie’s biggest lead was 56-43, after a Francis’ three-point play with 5:48 to play. The closest Roman got was 62-57 with 1:06 left, when the Friars answered with three free throws—two by Francis—to seal it.

“This will be a lot better ride home,” said Keefer Francis, Korey’s father, a correctional officer. “I’m always on Korey about giving it his all every time, and I know he was broken up about Friday. He hates to lose. He always hates to lose. His whole family has supported him, and I remember having him on this court as a baby when I was a junior here. Korey grew up on this court.

“He is very hard on himself. This team wants to win for each other. They want to get to the Palestra this year—not next year. This will be a lot better ride home tonight.”

Filled with the balloons and basketballs of Korey’s 1,000th-point pregame celebration, and the good thoughts of a game well played again.

By Quarter

Roman Catholic (13-7, 8-3 Catholic League):  10  | 11  |  21  | 17 || 59

Bonner-Prendie (15-5, 8-3 Catholic League):  15  | 13  |  21  |  22 ||  71

Scoring

Roman Catholic: Sammy Jackson 17, Bryce Presley 16, RJ Smith 13, Brad Wanamaker Jr. 7, Aljalil Bey Moore 6.

Bonner-Prendie: Korey Francis 28, Jakeem Carroll 16, Kam Jackson 11, DeShaun Holden 9, Aydin Scott 4, Tariq Warner 3.

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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.