City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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When Dan Long takes over, there aren’t many teams around that can slow him down.

North Penn found out the hard way on Tuesday night.

Long, a 6-foot-2 senior guard at Pennridge, led the Rams into the Knights’ lair in a Suburban One-Continental Clash and flat-out dominated the second half, scoring a game-high 31 points to lead Pennridge to a 74-66 road win.

The star guard, bound for Monmouth for his abilities on the baseball diamond, connected on 14 of the final 15 field goal and free-throw attempts that he attempted, finishing 9-of-13 overall from the floor and 11-of-13 from the foul stripe.

“Dan makes me look pretty good,” Pennridge coach Dean Behrens joked afterwards. “Dan wants to win, you can see that in his eyes. And Dan doesn’t really care how many points he has, he just wants us to have more points than the other team when the game is over.”

While Long dominated for good stretches of the game, he got plenty of help. Senior Max Wagner added 14, including eight in a row during an 11-0 second-quarter run that took what had been a tie game and made it 33-22 with under three minutes to play in the third.

The 6-8 forward began the run with a triple from straightaway, then followed that up with two put-backs, the last of which earned him a 3-point play; he finished with 10 rebounds as well.

“Max really stepped up I thought and had a couple key buckets, that was a nice 11-0 run,” Behrens said. “And then give North Penn credit, I think they went on a 6-0 run if I’m not mistaken and made it more interesting.”

Pennridge’s 39-34 halftime advantage grew to 54-41 at the end of a third quarter that saw Long score nine and Ryan Cuthbert (11 points) added two buckets on his only two attempts.

Long had two driving layups first, then a 3-pointer that re-established the 11-point lead before one more layup gave the Rams their biggest lead to that point.

It seemed like no matter how Long wanted to get to the bucket, he could--and then he finished every time.

"My shot hasn’t been falling as well as I feel like I can shoot," he said, "but this game it was kind of uptempo, we were able to get up and down the floor, so I thought getting to the basket was the most effective, getting to the free-throw line.”

He did that last bit at the end of the game, knocking down eight consecutive fouls hots in the final few minutes to seal the win.

It helped during that third quarter that the Rams were able to limit the effectiveness of North Penn junior wing Reece Udinski, holding him scoreless in the third quarter though the C.B. West transfer finished with 17 points to lead the Knights in scoring.

“We’ve seen him on film but he didn’t play last year...but he would get in the paint and he would spin,” Behrens said. “We talked about that, at his size, he’s 6-4, when he does that and Dan Long was on him, he’s not going to block that shot.”

After Udinski, Lance Linsday Ford had 13 points and six rebounds for the Knights (4-7, 1-4 SOL) as the only othe rplayer on the team in double figures; freshman A.J. Mitchell added nine off the bench, including eight in the fourth quarter.

Win the win, the Rams held serve in the SOL-Continental standings, improving to 4-1 in league play (9-2 overall) to stay one game behind Central Bucks West, who downed a Hatboro-Horsham squad that up until Tuesday night had been tied with them atop the division.

Pennridge has a quick turnaround against Neshaminy at home on Wednesday night, a game that could certainly bring a lot of intrigue after video surfaced Tuesday night of Neshaminy head coach Jerry Devine appearing to get physical with a referee at the end of the game.

After that it’s a game against Hatboro-Horsham, on the road.

Behrens knows that if his group drops another SOL game, it could be impossible to catch the Bucks for the league crown, and will also make it tough to qualify the four-team Suburban One League playoff between the regular season and the beginning of District 1 AAAA playoffs.

“We need to keep holding serve until we get back to West, or Hatboro, we need to take care of ourselves,” Behrens said. “Our goal, which is a high expectation, is to try to win the division, which right now we’re not; but to get to the playoffs and take another run at the states.”