City of Basketball Love

Aron Minkoff (@AronMinkoff)
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As calendars turn from January to February, the high school basketball season starts to come to a close.

All eyes in the Philadelphia Catholic League are trained on Neumann-Goretti, the first place team, who came into Sunday with a perfect 12-0 mark.

In the Saints final regular season game, it was their quartet of seniors that stole the show, on senior day no less. and finished the PCL undefeated, a feat no team has accomplished since 2012, with an 84-55 blowout of Conwell-Egan.

“Everybody counted us out in the beginning,” senior Vaughn Covington said. “And proving everyone wrong feels real good. We still have a lot of work to do, still have a championship to compete for.”

The last team to finish the PCL regular season without a blemish was the 2011-2012 Saints, a team that did so in the middle of a streak of 73 consecutive wins in the Catholic League.

The four seniors, Covington, Zane Martin, Rasheed Browne and Amir Tyler combined to score 57 of the Saints 85 points, and they barely saw the court in the fourth quarter with the score so out-of-hand.

“it feels real good, my last home game, I am just happy we got that victory,” Martin said. “Everyone counted us out. But to overcome all of the haters is big.”

Martin had himself quite the day. The 6-foot-3 Towson commit led all scorers with 23 points, on 9-12 shooting, to go along with seven assists. He was the first senior to be pulled off of the court with a little over seven minutes remaining in the game, to a standing ovation.

Along with Martin’s 23, Covington chimed in 15 points of his own while shooting 6-8 from the field. The 6-1 guard just picked up an offer from VMI last week to go along with a previous offer from LeHigh.

The third Saints senior starter, Browne finished with 13 points on 6-11 shooting. Browne is a bit of a late bloomer and has offers from Morgan State and Florida Gulf Coast. Browne plans to make his decision following the PCL playoffs.

FGCU, formerly known as “dunk city” had a representative in the stands at the South Philadelphia based school on Sunday.

“Every time that they are here he seems to play great so hopefully they keep coming,” Neumann-Goretti coach Carl Arrigale remarked.

Browne certainly did his part to help lead the Saints to a victory, adding three assists to his statline.

“It feels great [to go undefeated],” Browne said. “Because even though they were doubting us, saying we weren’t going to be as good since we lost a couple of people, we proved them wrong.”

Last but not least, Tyler, a 5-10 guard, who seldom sees the court chimed in six points of his own and left the court to perhaps the loudest ovation of the day.

“Amir played great, I was really happy for him,” Arrigale said. ”Zane, Sheed and Vaughn played like they’ve been playing all year. I have had some seniors who have gotten a little nervous on this day, but they played calm and confident. It was a really nice day for everybody.”

For Conwell-Egan, senior Lapri McCray-Price led the team with 15 points and fellow senior Vinny Delesandro chimed in 10 points.

What is next for the Saints is a chance at redemption. The Saints ended last season atop the PCL standings, only to lose the crown to Roman Catholic. Neumann is competiting to win its seventh PCL title in the past eight seasons, and its sixth state championship in the last seven seasons.

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,”  Arrigale said. “When it’s over you can say that you won them all, but it really doesn’t mean anything. We played pretty well during the regular season, but we are about the post season around here, we always have been.”

With attention focused towards the postseason, the Saints, with that perfect mark, will enter the PCL playoffs as the number one seed. They will play the winner of the eighth seeded Father Judge and ninth seeded Archbishop Wood. Neumann will host the game on Friday, February 12.

From there, the winner will take stage in primetime in the PCL semifinals which are played at the Palestra.

“I think we can go all of the way,” Browne said.
The Saints certainly are confident as they go marching into the postseason.