City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Early in the season, Devon Prep wasn’t ready for a gut-check moment like the one the Tide faced on Wednesday.

After a five-point halftime deficit against Calvary Christian turned into a one-point lead midway through the third, Calvary scored eight straight and threatened to run away in their District 1 AA semifinal at Plymouth-Whitemarsh’s court at Colonial Elementary.

But the third-seeded Tide learned from the lumps they took during the regular season, and put them to good use, coming back to pick up a 44-35 win over the second-seeded Cougars and advance to Saturday’s final.

“They’re mentally getting tougher, they’re growing, they’re learning how to play basketball and respond to things like that,” Devon coach Jason Fisher said. “I don’t know if we win this game two months ago.”

Two months ago--Dec. 11 to be exact--Devon lost to Calvary 69-64 on its home court. That was part of a regular season where the Tide went 9-13, including 5-10 in Bicentennial Athletic League play.

That frustration finally boiled over when they were down 29-22 with 10 minutes to play on Wednesday, as they finished the game on a 22-6 run.

“Early in the season, we weren’t really tough,” said Fisher, now in his third year as head coach. “The second half today, I think we played the toughest that we’d played all year. That’s what we told the guys, if they played a physical game of basketball, they could beat anybody.”

After senior Daniel Shannon (6 points) cut the Calvary lead to 29-28 at the end of the third quarter by going coast-to-coast in five seconds for a buzzer-beating layup, his Devon teammates scored the next six points while holding Calvary without a point for the first 5:30 of the final period, at which point a Joel Thibodeaux bucket made it 34-31 Tide.

Devon senior John McSurdy’s fourth 3-pointer of the game re-established the six-point lead with two minutes left, and Shannon went 4-of-4 from the foul line to seal the victory. McSurdy, a 6-3 wing who’s playing his first year of high school basketball, led all scorers with 17 points, while fellow senior Danny Brace had 10 points and six rebounds for the Tide.

“(Brace) has been there from the beginning, and to watch him grow over the last three years is remarkable, he’s doing stuff now that I didn’t think he could do,” Fisher said. “Just to see him learn and progress, it’s good to see.”

Now, despite its record, Devon Prep is one win away from the PIAA Class AA tournament for the first time in Fisher’s tenure, with a game against BAL foe Church Farm waiting on Saturday (4 PM, Council Rock South).

And they know they’re tough enough.

“We played teams like this during the regular season, playing Church Farm, Valley Forge, Holy Ghost, Lower Moreland,” Fisher said. “It prepares us for games like this, and that’s why they’re on our schedule. Records mean nothing right now.”

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Game Two: Church Farm vs. Valley Forge Military Academy

It was ugly. It was gritty. It was, at times, literally bloody.

That’s pretty much par for the course when Church Farm and Valley Forge go head-to-head, with each school boasting a 6-foot-10 sophomore guarding the paint. Both of their regular-season meetings were three-point wins for Church Farm, with both games played in the forties.

The postseason battle was even more rough-and-tumble, though Church Farm emerged victorious yet again by a 36-29 decision.

The battle to watch was Church Farm’s Fred Odhiambo going up against Valley Forge’s Abraham Deng, as the two athletic-but-raw centers scrapped for nearly every rebound and loose ball around the rim. Odhiambo got the better of his African counterpart with 11 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks, while Deng had 13 rebounds but only three points.

“We try to play a pretty good non-league schedule as well so he gets opportunities to play against nice-sized athletes,” Church Farm coach Marc Turner said. “(But) this is a unique opportunity because (Deng) is a mirror image of (Odhiambo)--almost, maybe not as experienced at this point--but I think Fred’s always up for those kinds of challenges and he’s performed well against him.”

Odhiambo was the only player on either team to hit the double-figure mark in scoring. Church Farm’s Augustus Veniukevius, one of the Griffins’ other usual leading scorers, had nine points but spent a good portion of the game on the bench with two separate cuts, including one over his left eye in the fourth quarter that caused a several-minute stoppage.

In the Class AA final, Church Farm will get a Devon Prep squad against which they had one of their best defensive outings of the year, holding the Tide to just 18 points during a 28-point win in January.

Only one of them will qualify for the state tournament.

“They’re going to have revenge on their mind, we got them pretty good at our place, but every game’s a different challenge,” Turner said. “I’m sure they’re going to be fired up and ready to go, but we’ll be ready for the challenge.”