City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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As Simon Gratz prepared for its District 12 play-in game against Archbishop Ryan, the plan was simple, at least how senior guard Johnny Eden described it.

“We just had to go back to playing Bulldog basketball like it was in the day,” he said.

What Eden’s referring to is the glory days of Gratz basketball, back when stars like Rasheed Wallace, Aaron McKie and current head coach Lynard Stewart wore the Bulldog uniform in the early 1990s. That trio of pros helped Gratz become one of the top teams in the city, but the school located at 18th and Hunting Park hasn’t turned out a 1,000-point scorer or Division I player since Mark Tyndale (Temple) in 2004 and Malik Alvin (Binghamton) the following the year.

But aside from Alvin, none of them got to do what this year’s Gratz team accomplished.

Thanks to a 60-55 win over the Raiders, the Bulldogs are going to the PIAA Class AAAA state tournament.

“I think I put more pressure on me, myself than I put on the kids,” Stewart said afterwards. “I took it all off of them, they didn’t know I never played in the states, none of the coaches played in the states. I didn’t want them to carry that load; ‘coach didn’t play in the states, we need to make it for him.’”

The PIAA only admitted the Philadelphia Public League for the first time in 2004-05, and the Bulldogs qualified in each of the first four years they were able. But they haven't been back since 2009.

Stewart doesn’t quite have the same talent on his roster that he played with in his high school days--but there haven’t been many Philadelphians who went on to a 19-year professional career like Wallace did.

What the first-year head coach does have is a group that’s bought in over the course of the season, something that was apparently to him in the days and practices leading up to Thursday night.

“We huddled up at the end (of practice) in a circle and guys were huddling and putting their arms around each other, and I said ‘this is the feeling, this is the aura that we wanted to have starting the year,’” Stewart said. “Guys were holding each other, laughing and joking after practice, saying ‘let’s get shots up’ and stuff like that. It’s good that we have it now, guys are coming along, they’re playing for each other, you can see they’re playing for each other on the court.”

“The beginning of the season, we had our little fall-outs with teammates, but all we did was stick together, our coach said to stay together," senior guard Jamal Goode said. "We built a relationship with each other and we went out there and we played, played like this is our last.”

Trailing by seven late in the second quarter, Gratz scored the last six points of the half to take some momentum into the locker rooms. They continued that run into a 10-0 stretch out of the break, and went on to win the third quarter 22-12 and go up 43-34 with eight minutes remaining.

Goode, a 5-foot-8 point guard, went scoreless in the first half but had 10 points in that third quarter alone, including two big 3-pointers. He finished with 14 points.

“Going into halftime we just said alright, we’re going to come out, we’re going to play our game, we’re not going to worry about anything else,” he said. “We just went out and had fun.”

Goode was one of three Bulldogs in double figures. Junior guard Johnny Eden, a 5-9 guard led his team with 18 points, while senior guard Tyriek Meredith, the shortest of the trio, had eight of his dozen after halftime and grabbed seven boards.

That was against a Ryan frontcourt that went 6-6, 6-6, 6-5.

Gratz held the lead between eight and 12 points almost the entirety of the fourth quarter. Ryan made one push, getting within three points on a 3-pointer by Austin Chabot with 2:44 left, but that was as close as it got.

Ryan was done in by its 3-point shooting, a usually-reliable Raiders squad going 5-of-30 (16.6 percent) from beyond the arc as its season comes to an end.

“I don’t think it was nerves at all, just didn’t shoot well...we played what might have been our worst game of the year today, shooting-wise,” said Ryan coach Joe Zeglinski, like Stewart a first-year head coach at his alma mater whose team exceeded expectations this year. “I told the seniors I was proud of them, they had a heck of a season to leave on.”

Senior point guard Austin Slawter led the Raiders with 20 points. Fellow seniors Chabot (five points, five rebounds) and Freddie Killian (six points, 12 rebounds) also played their final games in Ryan uniforms.

The only Ryan player in double figures was the team’s usual leading scorer, junior guard Izaiah Brockinton, who had 11 points but was constantly pestered by the Gratz defense.

“We also have a bunch of left-handed kids, so in practice we let them pretend to be Brockington in practice, shoot the shots, go hard left and so we were kind of prepared for that,” Stewart said. “We realized man-to-man we can pressure their guards, force them to do some things...I think we took control of the game once we went man-to-man.”

In the first round of the PIAA Class AAAA tournament, which takes place next Saturday, Gratz will play either Ridley or Lower Merion at a location and time to be determined.

Stewart and the Bulldogs can’t wait to check out uncharted territory.

“The guys know if they play together, eliminate a lot of mistakes that sometimes we make, we really can be competitive,” he said. “We’ll run into a tough team in the next round or after that, and if we play together I think we can be a team that hopefully makes some noise.”