City of Basketball Love

Aron Minkoff (@AronMinkoff)
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For Neumann-Goretti, all that matters is winning.

It does not matter how it happens nor who is responsible, all that matters is that the Saints play their game and win.

Enter Archbishop Ryan, an upstart program that came in desperately looking for a season-defining victory over the first place Saints.

And then things got a little bit heated.

“We are a veteran team, we can’t get involved in all of that,” Neumann-Goretti coach Carl Arrigale said. “It is something that we have to get better at, we can’t get caught up, we made some bad plays.”

Emotions ran high as, three technical fouls were called during the game, one each on Neumann-Goretti’s Vaughn Covington and Ryan’s Amin Bryant. The third was assessed to Ryan’s coach, Joe Zeglinski.

The Saints proved to be too much for Ryan to handle though, and emerged victorious 91-75.

That was not before things looked like they could take a turn for the worse for the Saints.

After leading the whole game, most of the way by as many as 25 to 30 points, Ryan pulled as close as 12. And the Raiders clawed their way back on the poor foul shooting of Neumann-Goretti.

“Notice the more that we missed, the more excited that they got and they hit us with another foul,” Arrigale said. “Then you get the crowd in the way, people start screaming and hollering. We gotta be better team than that.”

For the day, Neumann-Goretti shot 47 free throws, and connected on 32 of them. At the forefront of those misses was junior Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree. The 6-foot-8 forward made just 5 of his 14 attempts from the free throw line.

“He is a much better foul shooter than he was today,” Arrigale said. “We will get back in the gym Tuesday, and we will work on that. He was not off by a lot, I think it crept into his head a little bit today, normally he misses one or two and then he gets himself back together, I think it was just one of those things today.”

Free throw shooting aside, Cosby-Roundtree was an absolutely dominant force inside today. In what might have been his most dominant performance on the season, he finished with 23 points, 11 rebounds and four huge blocks.

Ryan repeatedly attacked the paint, and attempted to get into his head, but Cosby-Roundtree could not be stopped on either end of the floor.

Despite, the tension that built from an errant Cosby-Roundtree elbow that collided with a Ryan player near the visiting bleachers, he would not be stopped nor involved in any skirmishes.

“I was just focused on winning,” Cosby-Roundtree said. “I was not worried about them, just focusing on the game and doing what we needed to do so we could win the game.”

Fellow junior Quade Green also put in his usual day’s work, tallying 18 points and five assists, including two beautiful feeds to Cosby-Roundtree that resulted in posterizing dunks.

“We have to get him the ball more,” Green said. “It is very comforting, we know that somebody has our back down there, make sure he doesn’t get his shot blocked. He do what he has to do.”

The two certainly seem to have quite the chemistry. With Ryan gaining momentum in the third quarter, Green slashed to the hoop, before distributing a well-oiled behind-the-back bounce pass to an open Cosby-Roundtree who slammed it home.

“It is just a natural instinct,” Green explained. “We have been playing for a long time together.”

Cosby-Roundtree has several Division I offers on the table from schools such as Temple, Syracuse, SMU and St. Joseph’s. He said that he has been talking to USC, Miami, Temple, Seton Hall, Villanova, VCU and Providence the most and is starting to garner interest from Virginia, Providence and Missouri.

On the other side, Ryan was paced by the steady play of senior Austin Slawter. The 6-foot tall guard finished with 15 points, seven assists, seven rebounds and six steals, while junior wing Izaiah Brockington chimed in 23 points.

“I just liked how our guys didn’t back down at half time,”  Zeglinski said. “It would’ve been very easy to let that game get away from us. We obviously didn’t come out ready to play. That needs to change for next time, but we saw how good they are and next time we will be ready to go from the start.”

These two teams very well could meet again in the Catholic League playoffs. Currently, Neumann-Goretti sits atop the standings at 11-0 in league play, a spot that they don’t appear to be giving up any time soon.

With today’s loss, Ryan now finds themselves in a four-way tie for fifth place with Archbishop Wood, St. Joseph’s Prep and Conwell Egan. The Ryan loss combined with a La Salle win, moved La Salle into the coveted top-four.

If these two teams should happen to meet again, all eyes will be on the physicality displayed by both teams. Ryan proved to be successful at derailing the Saints game plan with their gritty, tough play.

At the end of the day, it is all about composure. Composure leads to wins.

“I keep my composure so they better keep theirs,” Arrigale said. “I always tell them, I will take the hit for them, I’ll act up, I don’t want any of them acting up, it is just how we present ourselves.”