City of Basketball Love

Thomas Primosch (@Thomas Primosch)
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When Philadelphia University guard Kaison Randolph went down with a meniscus injury in Friday’s game against Post University, the Rams lost their second leading scorer and one of their go-to ball handlers.

It made no difference on Wednesday, as Herb Magee’s squad rolled to a comfortable 71-58 victory over Wilmington University, the team’s seventh win in a row.

Philly U got off to a quick start, jumping out to a 10-2 lead in the first four minutes. The Rams dictated flow of the game and showed no sign of missing Randolph’s production.

The Rams played tough defense and their height advantage was obvious each time a Wilmington player tried to drive to the rim. Magee was happy with the way his team defended and he was particularly pleased with the job done on the Wilmington’s leading scorer, Tyaire Ponzo-Meek. The Rams were able to hold him to 15 points, well below his season average of 24.4 ppg.

“I thought we did a good job defensively,” Magee said. “The kid Ponzo-Meek is a great player and he’s averaging close to 25 points per game so our game plan was to try and restrict the number of attempts he got. We blitzed him off the ball screen and I thought we did a good job with that.”

Sophomore Eric Long was a key rim protector for the Rams and the 6-7 forward stuffed the stat sheet, finishing with five blocks, 13 points, four assists, and six rebounds.

The Rams (17-4, 10-2) went into the break with a 33-21 lead after holding the Wildcats (6-15, 1-10) to just 9-35 (25.7%) from the field in the first half. Wilmington didn’t even record an assist until there was 6:02 left in the first half.

The two team’s traded buckets for most of the second half and the Wildcats were able to cut it to 40-32 with 12:42 left but, Mike Louden, who was starting in place of the injured Randolph, hit back to back jumpers to put the Rams back up by double digits.

“We were stagnant and he hit those two jumpers and they were both huge,” Magee said. “We’re always going to get a good effort out of him.”

Louden scored eight of his 10 points in the second half, and with Randolph potentially out for the season, the junior guard will need to keep contributing like he did tonight for the Rams to continue their winning ways.

After Louden’s two buckets shifted the momentum, the Rams never let the lead get back to single digits and the maintained their excellent defense until the final horn sounded.

Senior Peter Alexis was the star for the Rams. The 7-foot center finished with 28 points on 12-of-15 shooting and he was a constant mismatch for anyone the Wildcats tried to defend him with.

“He’s terrific,” Magee said. “He’s a handful for anybody. When they went zone it was strictly to try and stop him and it worked for a while but then we started getting him the ball in the zone too. He’s a big strong kid. He takes the court every night and he’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest guy out there and he’s a good player, he can play basketball, he’s smart.”

Added Alexis: “We had the whole weekend off because of the snow storm. Coach didn’t want to risk it so I think that just kind of gave guys a chance to really rest their legs and get themselves back to like that point before the season. I think that was definitely what helped us get off to that quick start tonight.”