City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin) &
Anthony Dabbundo (@AnthonyDabbundo)
—

To decide who would start in Abington’s Suburban-One League semifinal game on Saturday, Galloping Ghost head coach Charles Grasty pitted his seniors against the rest of his team in practice on Friday night.

The underclassmen won.

“They played us hard and they played us tough,” freshman Eric Dixon said, “but last night we really wanted to (start) this game so we played really hard--and we beat them, pretty bad.”

That was a sign of what was to come for Pennridge. Abington’s five starters--two freshmen, a sophomore and two juniors--combined for all but four of the Ghosts’ points in a 59-51 win over the Rams at Council Rock North HS.

Grasty let his young starters play the entire opening six minutes, but even once the seniors got in against a very experienced Pennridge group that started four seniors of its own, it was clear who his better unit was. They play like there’s no pressure because to them, there isn’t any.

“They could care less if they’re down one or they’re up one, they just play basketball,” Grasty said. “They don’t even really worry about runs or things like that. I’m telling them that they’re going to make runs, and they’re so young that I don’t think they understand what a run means.”

Last year’s Ghosts, led by current college freshmen Matt Penecale (West Chester) and Amir Hinton (Lock Haven), were expected to make a deep playoff run. This group came into the year with much lower expectations, but went 18-4 overall with a 13-1 record in SOL-National play heading into the playoffs.

So they’ll be playing for a Suburban One League title for the second straight year, trying to defend their title against either Plymouth Whitemarsh or Central Bucks West.

“We’ve got the experiences of our seniors to help us out a lot, but I think our youth helps us,” Dixon said. “Teams overlooked us sometimes and we go out there and we surprise them.”

Dixon, just 14 years old, certainly didn’t look like a young student-athlete playing in his first high school playoff game. The 6-foot-6, 250-pound center dropped 14 of his game-high 20 points before halftime as the Ghosts dominated the Rams inside early on.

He and 6-7 junior Joe O’Brien had a combined 24 points in the first half, which ended with Abington up 31-23.

“We wanted to play inside-out,” Grasty said. “That’s the way we wanted to play this year, that’s the way we have to play.”

After trailing by as many as 13 early in the third quarter, the Rams (19-4) put together an 18-7 run to cut the deficit to just two points entering the fourth. Fellow seniors Max Wagner and Stephen Lowry combined for 13 points on the run.

Lowry was 5-of-9 from beyond-the-arc, scoring 16 points to lead the Rams on a day when their usual leading scorer, Monmouth baseball commit Danny Long, was held to just six points.

After the Pennridge senior was unable to play in last year’s postseason due to health reasons, Behrens told Lowry that he would finally have a chance to make up for it this year.

“Steve has been really starting to play well for us,” Pennridge head coach Dean Behrens said. “I told him that he was finally able to play in the playoffs and he’s been playing with a lot of confidence.”

Once the fourth quarter started, Pennridge was shut down at the offensive end. After taking a 45-43 lead on Sean Yoder foul shots with 6:35 left, the Rams were held scoreless for the ensuing five minutes.

During those five minutes, the Ghosts went on a 10-0 run of their own to recapture the lead.

Credit shutting down Long goes to another Abington youngster, 6-4 freshman wing Lucas Monroe, who bothered Long all afternoon while chipping in 10 points of his own.

“We thought that Lucas could make (Long) take tough shots, we know he’s a heck of a player, he’s a heck of a shooter, we wanted to make him take tough jump shots,” Grasty said. “I thought our length definitely helped. The team rotated and helped Lucas out a lot but his length definitely, I thought he affected Long.”

As a team, the Ghosts length frustrated the Pennridge shooters, as the Rams were 16-of-57 (28.0 percent) from the field and 8-of-25 (32.0 percent) from beyond-the-arc. Abington, meanwhile, was 22-of-48 (45.8 percent) overall and 6-of-15 (40.0 percent).

While Pennridge collapsed on Abington’s bigs to help them during the comeback, the “out” portion of Grasty’s inside-out plan kicked in big-time. Sophomore Robbie Heath, the only returning starter from last year’s District 1 AAAA championship run, had two crucial 3-pointers during Abington’s late game run.

The first three from the corner gave Abington a 46-45 lead with 6:00 left, and the second--from a distance that would have counted for three in the NBA--extended the Ghosts lead to six with 3:18 to play.

“The Australian 3-point line is a bit further out so I thought that it was in my range,” the Aussie native said. “So I took it and I made it.”

Heath’s four foul shots, the final of his 15 points, sealed the win in the final minute.

Afterwards, Grasty and the Ghosts weren’t sticking around to see who won the battle between P-W (20-1, 13-1) and Central Bucks West (18-4, 12-2) in the later semifinal.

They'll play the winner on Monday at Bensalem High School.

“We’re going to go home, enjoy the win and get ready to play on Monday,” he said.