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NEBL Notebook: Tuesday, May 19

05/20/2015, 9:45am EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The Northeast Basketball League continued into its third week, with three games of action on the courts at the Mayfair Rec Center (2990 Saint Vincent Avenue) on Tuesday night.

Here’s a notebook recapping the action:

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Conwell-Egan 55, Cherokee 43

No matter what Cherokee tried, it just couldn’t stop Egan’s Stevie Jordan. The rising senior point guard, who’s picked up his first few Division I offers in the last few weeks, torched his opponent for 29 points, hitting 13 of his teams’ 20 buckets on the evening; a 3-pointer of his took what had been a four-point game at half and extend it to double figures with 10 minutes remaining as the Eagles held on. Jordan was the only player on his team to finish in double figures, as was Cherokee’s Tyler Tobin, who had 10.

Council Rock North 31, Paul VI 28

This was more of a survival for CR North than anything else, as both teams had troubles hitting shots or getting much going on offense at all. Riley Thompson scored 18 points but took quite a few shots to get there for Council Rock, and he was by far the leading scorer in the game; no Paul VI player scored more than five points.

Central Bucks East 60, New Foundations 52 (OT)

New Foundations erased a late six-point deficit to actually take a one-point lead in the final 30 seconds of regulation, but Tommy Strasburger was able to tie it up at the line and his team emerged victorious after four extra minutes. Strasburger, a senior wing, finished with nine points, while fellow rising seniors Justin O’Neill (11 points) and Blake Peterson (10) finished in double figures. New Foundations was powered by a strong effort from rising senior guard Keith Blassingale, who dropped 34 points, including four 3-pointers.
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Conwell-Egan working on follow-up act
It’s a new mindset for Conwell-Egan basketball.

For the first time ever, the Eagles are state champions. The Fairless Hills Catholic school hadn’t won a playoff game of any kind in 51 years until they topped Freire Charter in the District 12 AA title game, and then followed that up by winning five straight in the PIAA tournament to claim the PIAA trophy.

So things are going to be a little different this year.

“This is the first time for the Egan kids that they’re going to be a really big game for everyone they play next year,” head coach Frank Sciolla said. “And that is an emotional and a maturity thing that you really have to adjust to, you have to be ready for it all the time.”

“I used to love that, it was my favorite part of the job,” the former Pennsbury head coach, now entering his third year at Egan, continued. “There’s nothing I liked better going to someone’s court and knowing that if we lost, they were celebrating at half court, or if we lost, we were going to be in their yearbook. I think it was motivating.”

The Eagles certainly don’t have a bare cupboard returning, with a trio of rising seniors in Stevie Jordan, LaPri McCray-Pace and Vinny Dalessandro who will form the core of whatever rotation Sciolla winds up with this fall. Jordan, a 5-10 point guard with Division I offers from Richmond, Rider, Towson and Hampton, was the team’s leading scorer a year ago (16.8 ppg); 6-3 wing guard McCray-Pace (11.4 ppg) and 6-7 forward Dalessandro (10.5 ppg) were behind him.

But they do lose two starters in versatile wing Chase Kumor (10.2 ppg) and 6-5 stretch forward Sean Kelly, a 3-point threat who was usually called upon to do all the little things while his teammates handled the scoring load.

So Sciolla and his staff will be looking at players like rising senior James Thompson, rising junior Daniel Green and rising sophomore Eric Esposito (pictured above) to see what they can bring to the table.

“The number one thing that you get is do your younger kids accept their roles, or do they want to eat food that their stomach can’t handle,” Sciolla said. “And the ones that can thrive into roles, they kind of stand out, and the ones who keep swimming against the tide oftentimes get pulled under.”

To understand the concept of fitting into one’s role, those younger Eagles need only to look at the case of Kumor, who came over from Penn Charter before his junior year due to construction that increased his commute to PC to over an hour each way. The 6-3 wing ended up being the glue that brought the Eagles together.

“We have an absolutely huge, gaping, triple-lane hole left by the loss of Chase Kumor,” Sciolla said. “As much as it will be felt on the court...his impact in the locker room, on the floor, on the bus was immeasurable. He was truly one of the great leaders I’ve ever had in that regard.

“We’re going to have to replace that as a group, no one kid has the ability to do that at this point. Because if you don’t, then you can fall prey to what many teams do in that next year, wanting to chase individual accolades.”
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Quick Shots
--Very solid night for 2016 G Keith Blassingale, who dropped 34 points for New Foundations in his teams’ overtime loss to Central Bucks East. New Foundations, which plays in the Penn-Jersey league, is still very much an unknown quantity in this NEBL, but their 6-foot-tall rising senior guard can really score it, and he’s going to get himself noticed if he has a few more big nights. He’s a confident shooter from the perimeter but knows how to get to the line as well, and should start getting Division II and Division III looks.

--One of those Conwell-Egan reserves who had a solid game on Tuesday night was Daniel Green, a rising junior who’s likely to see solid minutes either as a starter or top reserve for Sciolla and staff. The 6-foot-tall guard plays tough on both ends of the floor and kept the ball moving on the offensive end, understanding when to defer to his high-scoring teammates and when to attack the basket.