City of Basketball Love

Tom Reifsnyder (@tom_reifsnyder)
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As Roman Catholic’s final shot attempt of the game went awry, Josh Sharkey snatched an outlet pass from a teammate and pounded the ball up the court with a markedly blank expression across his face, seemingly evading the elation of beating one of the nation’s best high school basketball teams.

Down by 10-plus points with less than 20 ticks to play, Roman coach Chris McNesby called off the dogs, allowing Sharkey to saunter past midcourt and convene with his teammates, who had just handed the Cahillites their second Catholic League loss in three games to start the season.

Senior guards Ryan Daly and John Rigsby, sporting more noticeable grins, gave Sharkey some dap as the they waited for the final buzzer to sound, but it was by no means the court-storming bonanza one might have expected given such a high-level victory.

Instead, the trio opted to finish the game how they started it: calm, cool, confident and, most importantly, together.

“We had fun the last two years, but this year, it’s definitely … you can tell there’s a sense that everyone is more close together than in years past,” Daly said. “We’re really like a family this year, I guess you could say.

“Me, Josh and John all kind of came together and said, ‘In years past, we were held back by not being a team that’s united,’ so it was just trying to get all these guys together because if we play as separate parts then we’re not going to be as good as we can be, but when we all buy in together then you can see that we can win some pretty big games.”

From start to finish, Carroll (12-1, 4-0 Catholic League) was the more balanced team on both ends, getting scoring production from all five starters and switching seamlessly between man-to-man and zone defenses in a 64-51 win over Roman (9-3, 2-2) at Girard College on Sunday afternoon. Carroll’s trio of senior guards ultimately stole the show, with Daly notching a game-high 20 points and 10 rebounds, Sharkey controlling the tempo with 13 points and 11 assists and Rigsby playing the role of ‘glue guy’ to a tee with 10 points and 4 rebounds.

These aren’t the high-flying Patriots of years past that featured the likes of Derrick Jones, now a freshman at UNLV, and David Beatty, who transferred to St. Benedict’s this past summer before his junior season, but Carroll coach Paul Romanczuk has his 2015-16 squad firing on all cylinders, and the Daly-Sharkey-Rigsby backcourt is manning the controls expertly.

“I just think you can’t understate the experience of senior guards in the Catholic League that have been there and done that,” Romanczuk said. “You kind of lean on those guys and I’m very fortunate to have three really, really good senior guards.”

Daly’s brother, Colin, a junior guard, got Carroll’s engine revving early, scoring his only points of the afternoon on a corner three for the first bucket of the game, which sparked a 10-2 run for the Patriots.

Roman senior small forward Lamar Stevens, who finished with a team-high 21 points, scored all seven of his team’s first-quarter points and led an 8-2 spree to start the second quarter, raising the crowd to its feet with an alley-oop slam assisted by fellow senior and Penn State commit Nazeer Bostick, who added 13 points and five boards.

However, the Cahillites’ awakening was far too delayed by McNesby’s estimation.

“In the second quarter, we turned it up, but it’s about eight minutes too late,” McNesby said. “We talked about that after the last couple of games; coming out a little bit more hungry. And we just kind of came out complacent, but it’s something we got to work on.”

Roman’s lack of early pressure allowed the Patriots to settle into their offense and go to work in the paint, where the Cahillites were missing 6-foot-7 junior forward Paul Newman, who has been out the last three games due to a concussion.

Newman’s absence made for open season on the block for Carroll center Miks Antoms. The 6-foot-7, 230-pound senior from Latvia posted 12 points against smaller defenders like Stevens, who was marred by early foul trouble, and Bostick.

“We’ve continued to have faith in him through his ups and downs and his adjustment to basketball over here and because of that our team was rewarded tonight with arguably his best game of the year,” Romanczuk said of Antoms.

As Sharkey, Daly, Rigsby and Antoms continued to control the lead for Carroll in the second half, the four seniors made room for another classmate to make his mark.

Alex House, who finished with six points, knocked down two crucial, second-half threes; one to give Carroll a 40-36 lead in the third and another to hand Roman a 52-44 deficit in the fourth, a lead which Carroll would not relent.

“The thing with Alex is he’s so skilled that it’s just a matter of waking him up and getting him tougher and to want to play with more energy, and against St. Benedict’s he played really well; he hit a three, he had a couple offensive rebounds," Daly said. “So in these big games he seems to step up, and then today when we saw him hit those threes we got excited, but we knew we should expect that from him because of how skilled he really is.”