City of Basketball Love

Rich Flanagan (@RichFlanagan33)
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Joe Zeglinski has had a pretty smooth transition as head coach at Archbishop Ryan taking over for his former coach, Bernie Rogers, who is now at The Haverford School.

This season, Zeglinski has propelled the Raiders to a 15-7 (8-5 in the Philadelphia Catholic League) record including a regular-season finale victory over Lansdale Catholic, 52-39.

With the win, the Raiders secured the fifth seed in the PCL playoffs and will go on the road to face La Salle College High School on Friday night in the quarterfinals. Zeglinski thought his team was thinking too far ahead during their matchup with the Crusaders.

“We didn’t play our best,” Zeglinski said. “Later on, we got our continuity back. We’re definitely going to get a lot of shots up this week. I think the kids were going through the motions thinking about the playoffs. Still, they’re really ready.”

The Raiders shot an abysmal 11-of-31 from the free-throw line, including 5-14 in the first half. Yet, they never trailed in the game, led by senior starters Austin Chabot and Austin Slawter. Chabot poured in a game-high 21 points and five rebounds. Slawter had 12 points and three rebounds.

A big area of the Raiders' success came off forcing turnovers as they tallied 14 steals, with Slawter and junior guard Izaiah Brockington each recording five.

Slawter, Chabot, forward Freddie Killian (two blocks), Bryan Arpino and Colin Murphy all started in honor of Senior Day, but when regular starters Brockington and Matiss Kulackovskis (three points, two blocks) checked into the game, the Raiders struggled to find consistency early on.

Brockington came in with 1:45 left in the first quarter and immediately recorded a basket and two steals in that tim-frame alone. He finished with eight points. The Raiders took a seven-point lead into the locker room at halftime but could not put away the Crusaders (4-18, 2-11), who were led by Dan Modestine (eight points) and Ryan Braun (seven).

The Raiders pulled away in the fourth quarter extending their lead to 44-32 with 6:54 remaining and their lead never fell below double-digits from there.

The Raiders head into their playoff matchup with La Salle having won five of their final six games, and will be looking to avenge their 57-37 loss to the Explorers from earlier this season.

Chabot said the Raiders need to be the tougher team to prevail.

“Toughness is a big factor,” Chabot said. “There are other factors like rebounding and executing. They’re a good team and we have to try and out-tough them.”

Zeglinski knows what his team needs to work on in preparation for the Explorers and believes the goal they had set before the season began can be accomplished.

“They’re very tough. We have to stay composed,” Zeglinski said. “We had too many turnovers in the first half the last time we played them. It’s going to be a physical game…Our goal was to get to the Palestra. We’ve set ourselves up to do that. That was our goal all season.”