City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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YORK — Although York Catholic’s historically strong basketball program stuffed another championship into the packed trophy case that glistens just outside Forjan Gymnasium, not one member of the Fighting Irish is completely satisfied.

Every single one of them, in fact, believes the Irish are just getting started.

And that just might be the case.

Able to pull away by using a strong finishing kick to the first half and a quick start to the second, explosive York Catholic collared a YAIAA Division III title Friday night at home by pulling away to a 65-51 triumph over defending champion Hanover.

“It’s definitely satisfying,” said first-year coach Blaine Claiborne, a freshman in 1990 when Mike Keesey’s Irish captured the last of their four PIAA championships. Claiborne also is York Catholic’s third coach in as many seasons.

“That’s the first goal that we had," he said. "I think everybody’s like that, try to win your division and get into the playoffs. We were being greedy because we said we wanted to sweep. We still got one more to go, but we want to sweep our division and win all 14 of our games. We’ve got a chance to do that and that’s what we want to do.”

D’Andre Davis racked up 17 points — including 10 in the final three minutes of the opening half — and Eddie Smith tacked on 10 more as Claiborne’s Irish (15-4, 13-0) pocketed their fourth straight victory and sixth in seven games.

Eight others cracked the scoring column as Claiborne’s deep squad — Joe Bauhof, Kyle Derowski and Malik Martin added eight points apiece — closed the first half with a 13-4 burst that had the Irish sitting on a 33-24 halftime lead.

“Real big,” Davis admitted when asked about YC’s first-half finish. “It gave everybody energy. We came out shaky at the beginning, but then we picked it up.

“Everybody got their confidence. Everybody got things going.”

“Coach Keesey would always say when we would have a lead at halftime, he’d say when we were in the huddle, ‘The first three minutes are going to determine if we’re going to have an “easy” game or it’s going to be a slugfest,’” Claiborne recalled.

“If we put our foot down on them these first three minutes, that’s going to tell us if we’re going to have a comfortable lead for most of the game.”

Claiborne’s Irish began the second half in a hurry, too, outscoring Nate Myers’ Nighthawks (13-5, 9-2) 10-4 en route to a comfortable 43-28 cushion.

Kyle Krout racked up 24 points and Hunter Martz chimed in with 12 for Hanover, which trailed by as many as 19 points (58-39) before falling to York Catholic for the second time this season. YC claimed the earlier meeting 69-58.

Nick Castellanos snared six boards in limited minutes for the Irish — one more than Smith and Derowski managed to get their mitts around — while lead guard Andrew Forjan dished out seven of York Catholic’s 18 assists.

Forjan is the grandson of former skipper James Forjan — Claiborne called him “the architect of this whole thing” — and the son of erstwhile Irish star Jim Forjan. A professor at nearby York College, Jim Forjan played at Penn State in the early 1980s.

So, like Claiborne, the younger Forjan knows plenty about York Catholic’s sparkling hoops history. In addition to the Class AAA state title that Claiborne celebrated, the Irish also hoisted championship hardware in 1978 (AA), 1979 (AA) and 1987 (AAA).

“They care,” said Claiborne, who was the junior varsity coach last season at York Suburban before returning to his alma mater. “They want to be a part of that. When I met them, they would start asking me questions and I would start talking about it more and more. They are into the history and they want to be part of it.”

While the Irish quietly celebrated their first YAIAA divisional crown in four seasons — they have one more YAIAA III scrap remaining against Fairfield — next month they’ll begin pursuing their first league postseason title since 1991.

And their recipe for success is rather simple, even though Claiborne’s bunch doesn’t pack much size and length. The Irish did outboard Hanover 38-30, however.

A quick pace is the key here.

They look to run off misses by the opposition — and even makes — but when the break is unavailable they’ll unleash active half-court sets filled with ball movement and an endless stream of cuts to the tin that generally result in easy looks.

“You have to be able to play both ways,” Claiborne admitted. “We want to play up-tempo, but we’re not real big but we’re fast. All our guys are fast. And we’ve got a really good point guard who makes good decisions in the open court so that would be our strength to run. But at the same time, we’ve got smart kids and unselfish kids so we have put in an offense that’s not real complex.

“It’s movement, spacing, ball movement, player movement,” Claiborne added. “That’s what we stress. The guys do what I ask them to do.

“We’ve got to take advantage of our strengths.”

“We’re good at adjusting,” said Davis, a sophomore guard who transferred to YC from city rival York High. “We go in the half-court or we can run.

“Coach likes us to run. But if we have to slow it down, we’ll slow it down.”

Packing plenty of depth — Claiborne prefers a nine-man rotation, but he used 11 players before the opening half was in the books — the Irish will get after people defensively with a physical man-to-man look. Pressure also is available.

“My guys can play,” Claiborne said matter-of-factly. “So I don’t have a problem putting any of them in.”

“Playing together,” Davis added, referring to some intangibles that make Claiborne’s Irish tick at a high level. “Playing together. Off-the-court chemistry, that’s good.

“We just fit well as a team.”

Eastern York, a potential adversary when the YAIAA’s (York-Adams) eight-team postseason shindig convenes, was on hand to check out an Irish side that will meet another traditionally strong Class AA program Saturday night when Lancaster Mennonite bounces over for a non-league encounter.

Even though several regular-season scraps remain, the Irish want to take care of those before beginning their chase for a YAIAA postseason title. After that will come a District 3-AA championship chase that figures to involve York Catholic, Camp Hill, Trinity and quite possibly Hanover and Upper Dauphin. Mennonite, too.

Get through there and a return to states will await.

“The sky’s the limit for us,” Davis said. “We have good potential as a team.”

And now they hope to turn that potential into more history.

There’s plenty of it, inside and outside Forjan’s cozy confines.

“From the first day [I was here], it’s about getting banners,” admitted a chuckling Claiborne, who was part of several Irish sides that captured District 3 titles as well. “You want to come into the gym and say, ‘I was on that team, I was on that team.’

“I still do that.”