City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin) &
Ari Rosenfeld (@realA_rosenfeld)
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It was a battle expected to come down to the wire.

Neumann-Goretti and Roman Catholic: the top two teams not just in the Catholic League, not just in District 12 but likely in the entire state of Pennsylvania going head-to-head on Neumann’s home court at 10th and Moore streets in South Philadelphia.

Instead, a balanced Saints attack looked very much like the program that won PCL titles for six consecutive years before Roman ended that streak last March, pulling away in the third quarter and holding on for an impressive 85-68 win on Wednesday night.

Simply put, Neumann-Goretti wanted it more.

“They were hungrier than us, they got every loose ball, they beat us to rebounds,” Roman coach Chris McNesby said. “In every statistical category we thought we could beat them, they beat us.”

Both teams insisted beforehand that the contest wasn’t any different than any other they would play in the 13-game Catholic League schedule, though nothing about the game itself would have indicated as such.

The 650-person gymnasium was sold out well before the day of the game arrived, and it was a packed house for a junior varsity game that started 90 minutes before the varsity tip was scheduled to occur. Each bucket, each rebound, each subtle shift in momentum brought with it accompanying gasps and cheers from a crowd that was mostly in favor of the Saints but had plenty of people cheering for the Cahillites in an unfriendly building.

And yet afterwards there was no gloating, no showboating. A quick locker room celebration, and onto the next.

“It was a good win, but just another game on the schedule,” said Neumann-Goretti junior Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, one of as many as 10 future Division I players on the court between the two teams. “We’ve got plenty more games this month. It’s just the beginning of the season.”

Neumann-Goretti (7-2, 3-0 Catholic League) was able to take advantage of a mismatch inside, with Cosby-Roundtree, a 6-8 forward, going up against 6-6 Roman freshman Mikeal Jones. The Cahillites usually start 6-8 senior Paul Newman down low, but a concussion kept him on the sidelines.

“I just told (Cosby-Roundtree) there’s going to be a freshman out there, but he’s not your ordinary freshman, he’s a pretty good player,” N-G skipper Carl Arrigale said. “(Jones) might not be used to this kind of stuff, and take it to him.”

Cosby-Roundtree--a high-major recruit with offers from the likes of Miami, Southern Cal, Temple Syracuse, Villanova, Providence and more--did just that, finishing with a game-high 22 points and 13 rebounds along with four blocks. The lanky post had 14 points in the second half, catching a number of lobs for huge slams that brought a roar from the crowd each time.

The last one, off a feed from Rasheed Browne with 41 seconds left in the fourth quarter, was a punctuation mark to the win.

Quade Green, a top-50 recruit in the class of 2017, carried the Saints early on after they fell behind 12-2 to start the game. Green responded immediately with seven straight points to get his team back in the game, and scored 14 of his 20 in the first half; he also had six rebounds and four assists.

While Browne was on the front end of a couple alley-oops to Cosby-Roundtree, he did his fair share of scoring as well, finishing with 15 points on a number of hard-nosed drives, adding seven rebounds and eight assists. His last bucket was a vicious dunk in traffic that put the Saints up 17 points near the midway point of the fourth quarter, ending any thoughts of a Cahillite comeback.

“He had us hype, When he did that, we all were hype, and it went downhill for them,” Green said, with Cosby-Roundtree adding that the slam “sparked everything” for the Saints.

Browne and fellow senior Zane Martin, a Towson commit who scored 19 points with six rebounds and five assists, provided the complementary scoring that ultimately put Neumann-Goretti over the top. Yet another senior, Vaughn Covington, also knocked down some timely triples en route to nine points, adding four dimes.

With Green not attacking as much in the second half, Browne converted an and-one, Martin knocked down a three, and Covington hit two more during a 16-1 Saints run that gave them all the separation they needed after Roman had cut the deficit to just a single point.

“I said to our guys before the game, it’s always the unsung guys who come up big in these,” McNesby said. “In these games, you need those guys, role guys to step up. We didn’t really get production from that third or fourth guy, they had it pretty balanced throughout.”

Lamar Stevens led the way for Roman (9-2, 1-1 PCL) with 26 points, while fellow Penn State commit Tony Carr had 18, but it was difficult for Roman to get anybody else going. Nazeer Bostick, Roman’s third future Nittany Lion, was limited to just six points and one field goal.

This was the first big-time Catholic League environment for Stevens, who spent the last two years at the Haverford School (Pa.), and the powerful 6-foot-6 wing seemed to take it all in stride.

“It was a crazy crowd and crazy environment,” he said. “I knew I just had to stay level-headed and just play my game and hope for the best. They got us this time, but we’re definitely going to prepare and be ready for the next one.”

Now both teams will move on towards the rest of their schedule, with any potential rematch coming in either the Catholic League semifinals or finals. You can bet Roman Catholic will use the loss as ammunition should the two programs face each other again, and the Saints will surely be prepared to take the Cahillites’ best punch.

“It’s a little more pressure I guess, because we beat them,” Green said of a potential rematch. “So they’re gonna probably come out aggressive the next game, in the championship, so we’ve got to be more effective.”

Either way, there’s a lot of basketball to be played before then.

As Arrigale put it, “it’s still only a game on January 6th.”