City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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Recent history was not on Archbishop Ryan’s side coming into the season. The Raiders had consistently finished in the middle or near the bottom of the Philadelphia Catholic League for the last few seasons, but they had a few aspects to boast before the 2015-16 campaign began.

For starters, Ryan had a new coach in Joe Zeglinski, something that can usually breathe new life into a program. The Raiders also had a handful of returning scorers. But, most importantly, they had a clear objective.

“I think we set that goal of getting to the Palestra the first day,” Zeglinski said. “I knew the talent we had coming in, and there’s a real credit to the leadership we have.”

That goal became a reality last Friday, when fifth-seeded Ryan blew out No. 4 seed La Salle on the road to reach its first PCL semifinals since 2008. The Raiders will face a tough test against top-seeded Neumann-Goretti, which has not lost a league game all season, but they put themselves in good position to reach the state playoffs in Class AAAA.

Regardless of how Wednesday’s semifinal turns out, Ryan had a raucous celebration in its locker room and then on the court with fans and family after topping the Explorers.

“It was like a dream,” said junior wing Izaiah Brockington, who scored 27 points against La Salle. “It was just really crazy to think that in June we were talking about this moment, that we would be going to the Palestra. And then it really happened, we realized all our hard work paid off. It was great.”

Brockington, who averaged 14.9 points per game in the PCL, was the Raiders’ leading scorer. But the team also got significant contributions from seniors Austin Chabot (11.9 ppg), Austin Slawter (7.9 ppg) and Freddie Killian (5.7 ppg).

Zeglinski credited that quartet of upperclassmen for its leadership starting in the offseason, and the first-year coach also noted all 22 members of the Raiders’ roster were fully invested as the season got going.

And just like Ryan players bought into each other, they bought in to their new coach.

“Everybody trusted him, everybody trusted each other and we all played for each other,” Brockington said. “Coach came in and he changed the culture. Before him, we were kind of a seventh-, eighth-, 10th-place team. We were down in the standings and nobody was really taking us serious. When coach first came in he sensed a few things in us that it was sort of a losing culture, so he changed it. We liked it, we were really hype and we were always trying to improve our team chemistry.”

Zeglinski – a former Ryan star who went on to score more than 2,000 points at Hartford – has clearly made his mark on this Raiders bunch, turning around a program that went 4-9 last season to an 8-5 record in his first year.

Ryan started its PCL campaign on a strong note. Despite an opening loss to La Salle by 20 points, the Raiders rattled off three consecutive wins, including one on the road over Archbishop Wood. But that streak was followed by three straight losses, and it seemed Ryan could be headed toward another sub-.500 year in the conference.

The Raiders then won five of their last six games (the only loss coming to Neumann-Goretti), and had victories over St. Joe’s Prep and Conwell Egan that proved crucial in playoff seeding.

“They never gave up that goal,” Zeglinski said. “Even when things didn’t go right during the year – not everything was perfect – but we always got our focus back and they stepped up. We knew we were good enough and they really believed it.”

The Raiders carried that momentum into Friday night’s game, where they held La Salle to 11 first-half points and buried the home team with a huge third quarter. Their months-long dream had come true.

“We would be working out (in the summer), going at each other, and we knew going as hard as we were, there was nothing nobody was going to be able to do that could keep us from getting to the Palestra,” Brockington said. “We were so hungry to play like that because everyone was sleeping on Ryan.”

Yes, that sleeping included us, and Ryan will have another chance to turn heads on Wednesday night if they can do what no PCL team has done this season and top Neumann-Goretti.

PCL Semifinals Breakdown

Semifinal No. 1: No. 1 Neumann-Goretti vs. No. 5 Archbishop Ryan (7 p.m.)

As we talked about above, Ryan is riding high, but the Raiders could run into the buzz saw that is the Saints attack at the Palestra. N-G has won its 14 PCL games by an average of 29 points this season, and only once (vs. Wood), did it win by just single digits. Ryan kept it closer than most teams against the Saints, falling 91-75 on Jan. 31. The high-powered offense is led by four players who love to run and attack in Zane Martin, Quade Green, Rasheed Browne and Vaughn Covington and anchored by 6-foot-9 big man Dhamir Crosby-Roundtree. The Saints lost to Roman in last year’s PCL final the last time they played in the Palestra, so they’ll be anxious to erase that memory.

Semifinal No. 2: No. 2 Archbishop Carroll vs. No. 3 Roman Catholic (8:45 p.m.)

The last time Roman lost to a team from Pennsylvania, it was on a Sunday afternoon in early January against  Archbishop Carroll. The second PCL loss of the week for Roman made some wonder if the Cahillites could bounce back and repeat as champs. Well, Roman has rattled off 10 consecutive PCL wins since then and two more will give them another league crown. The Cahillites are led by a senior quartet of Tony Carr, Lamar Stevens and Nazeer Bostick, which wants to go out on top. To get back to that tile game, they’ll have to slow down PCL leading scorer Ryan Daly and lightning-fast Carroll point guard Josh Sharkey, who earned their way to the Palestra with a 77-70 double-overtime win over Wood on Friday night. Daly, who went for 20 points in the earlier win over Roman, has scored at least 20 in 10 of 14 PCL games – another big performance could have the Patriots playing for a league title.