City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The Abington-Cheltenham rivalry had something extra to it this year.

Not tough to figure out why: both teams are enjoying outstanding seasons, with a combined 31 wins against only eight losses entering the Suburban One League inter-division game. Abington, last year’s District 1 championship, was playing host to Cheltenham, who has joined a crowded group with their eyes on the prize this year.

Considering the game is always competitive between two schools located just under three miles away, the Galloping Ghosts’ gym was due to delight the packed crowd who showed up on Saturday afternoon.

And it delivered, an exciting start paving the way for a foul-infested 77-73 Cheltenham win.

Khalil White led the way with 15 points in the win, pacing three teammates in double figures. Fellow senior Justin Sutton added 14 and 11 rebounds, sophomore Amir Lewis also had 14 and junior Trevonn Pitts 12 for the Panthers, who opened the game on a 13-2 run and led for all but 20 seconds of the game.

"We brought a lot of fire, a lot of energy," Panthers head coach John Timms said. "We have an acronym, it’s called ICE: it’s Intensity, Communication and Energy. And we live by that.”

Cheltenham (16-4, 9-2) needed the victory badly after dropping a Suburban One American game to Upper Moreland (9-11, 5-7) the night before, its first game after six days off due to last weekend's snow storm.

With only four teams in the Suburban One's three divisions going to the league's playoffs next weekend and districts approaching quickly after that, the Panthers couldn't afford to lose much momentum.

"I didn’t look as last night’s game as an upset, I looked at it as a chance for us to grow," Timms said. "At the end of a game of basketball, someone has to win, someone has to lose. Last night we were on that losing end, but it helped us today and let’s hope it helps us moving forward, because right now we look at every game as a playoff game.”

Abington, which hadn’t lost since Dec. 30 against Friends’ Central, had a nine game winning streak snapped.

The Galloping Ghosts (16-4, 11-1) were undone by a 28-of-49 performance from the foul line, failing to take advantage of a Panthers lineup that had them in the bonus before the end of the first quarter and had four players foul out by the end.

“Sometimes that happens, I’m glad that it happened now and not in the playoffs where it could cost us,” Abington head coach Charles Grasty said. “That’s definitely uncharacteristic of this team, normally we’ve been a pretty decent foul-shooting team, but tonight, you miss 19 foul shots, you shouldn’t win any games anyways.”

The foul issues started early for Cheltenham, with Pitts picking up three fouls in the first quarter; he would be outdone by Brandon Mack, who had four in the first half. Mack fouled out late in the third quarter, shortly after his re-insertion into the game, while Sutton and Pitts each fouled out in the fourth quarter.

What that meant for Abington was a parade to the foul line, led by sophomore guard Robbie Heath, who had 12 of his 22 come via the charity stripe. That's a byproduct of an aggressive, assertive Cheltenham squad on both ends of the floor.

"Do we foul a lot? Yes, we do. It’s not as if the refs aren’t calling what they’re seeing," Timms said. "When you go into certain arenas, the whistle’s always going to be against you, you have to learn to play against it."

Abington rallied from as many as 10 down in the third quarter to take its only lead at 58-57 with 5:45 left in the fourth thanks to three straight steals, but Cheltenham got a step-back jumper from Khalil White to go back in front and there they would stay.

Grasty was whistled for a technical foul with 3:34 remaining after a pair of Pitts foul shots, when a double-foul was whistled as Abington tried to get the ball inbounds. Instead of the Ghosts having the ball down three, Sutton hit a pair of foul shots to help extend the lead.

"I’ll take that tech any time if you’re going to hold our guys and our guard pushes you off of him because you’re holding, I’ll take that," Grasty said. "We’re not going to let people just hold us and push us around, that’s just not the makeup of our program. If I’m going to get techs for the rest of the year, I’m going to protect our guys.”

Freshman big man Eric Dixon added 16 and six rebounds for the Galloping Ghosts, who also got 15 from senior guard Rob Young.

The Panthers survived thanks to a strong second-half effort from Pitts, an athletic 6-2 wing who had 10 of his dozen in the second half before fouling out with under three minutes to play.

The first-year ballplayer is still getting adjusted to the varsity level, and fouls are one area where his coach could use an accelerated learning curve.

“Learning how to play without getting fouls, learning how not to pick up the tacky fouls is still part of his process," Timms said. "When you see the box scores and you see Trevonn Pitts with seven points, it’s mainly because he’s not playing due to picking up cheap fouls and tacky fouls.”

Though the match-up didn’t count towards league standings, it certainly will have some sway in the district rankings set to be announced next Sunday.

After sneaking into the District 1 AAAA playoffs as the No. 29 seed a year ago with a 12-10 record, Cheltenham lost in the first round to another SOL squad, Plymouth-Whitemarsh. This year they’ll certainly be one of the top 16 seeds and hosting a first-round game, and have a good chance to land inside the top 10 and perhaps even top five.

It has the Panthers feeling much differently this year than last time around.

“I think that since we’ve been playing so well all season, we’ve built on that,” Sutton said. “Last year at this time, we had a .500 record, so that was keeping us down mentally. We have such a good record and we’ve been doing so well, we build on that and we ride that energy.”