City of Basketball Love

Rich Flanagan (@richflanagan33)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2016-17 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed so far can be found here.)

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Conwell-Egan begins a new season in search of an identity.

With changes to both the coaching staff and roster, the Eagles will look quite different than they have in recent years, the Eagles will look quite different than they have in recent years.

Former head coach Frank Sciolla stepped down in March after overseeing one of the best periods in school history, winning the PIAA Class AA state title in 2014-15. Also gone are First Team All-Catholic guard LaPri McCray-Pace, the school’s all-time leading scorer in the modern era, and Second Team All-Catholic forward Vinny Dalessandro. Both had been cornerstones of the program, starting since their freshmen year and each scoring over 1,000 points.

While several integral parts are gone from Conwell-Egan’s recent success, new head coach Eric Kindler believes the foundation Sciolla and the two former standout players laid down will help ease his transition at the helm in the Philadelphia Catholic League.

“With what Frank Sciolla did and what players like LaPri and Vinny did was create a good environment for success,” said Kindler, a 24-year-old Harrisburg-area native and former walk-on at Saint Joseph’s. “When you’re talking about a program, we’ll need to compensate for the loss of that talent but the bigger issue we need to [answer] is what kind of culture we’re going to create. That is the biggest goal for me.”

Kindler takes over a team which finished 17-10 overall (7-6 PCL) and lost to Bonner-Prendergast in the opening round of the PCL playoffs. Conwell-Egan did defeat Mastery North to winthe  District 12 Class AA title and advanced to the second round of the state playoffs before falling to Camp Hill, 60-57.

A former Boys’ Latin assistant, Kindler feels his team has more than enough talent to compete in the PCL and at the state level, largely due their overabundance of skilled players.

“With the way that we play, we’ll be able to live on offense. We have guys that can score the ball and have good minds to execute offensively,” he said. “I believe we have a good staff to coach and create a good framework for offensive execution.”

That offensive execution begins with point guard Darien Simmons, who scored 10 points in the team’s PCL playoff loss to Bonner-Prendergast and is the leading returning scorer at 4.7 ppg. Simmons was more of facilitator last season but sees an expanded role for himself this year.

“My role last year was getting the ball to those guys [McCray-Pace and Delassandro.] I’ll have a more dominant role this year,” Simmons said.

As Simmons noted, “a lot of people (outside the program) don’t know the guys who are going to step up this year,” but feels they will by season’s end.

Junior guards Patrick Robinson, who Simmons said “can be one of the best guards in the league this year,” and shooting guard Eric Esposito, who scored 112 points last year, should provide much needed scoring. Another junior, 6-7 James Leible should also be in the mix for minutes this season as well as 6-2 senior Daniel Green, who “can be one of the best defenders in the PCL,” as Simmons says.

Two other transfers, Antoine Sidote (Bensalem) and Devin Harris (Trenton Catholic), should challenge for minutes, while Simmons was also high on the potential of 6-10 junior Dave Rodriguez, a transfer from Doane Academy (N.J.).

Kindler feels his team has a “tremendous amount of depth and guys who can play at a high level,” and Simmons believes that depth will help them be competitive against the top teams in the deep PCL.

“I feel as though we can compete with [Neumann-Goretti] and we can compete with the best,” the senior guard said. “If we do the little things, we can work our way up [whether it’s] finishing plays and things like that. I don’t look at anybody like they’re higher than us.”

Conwell-Egan will open the season Dec. 12 at home against Academy of New Church.

Kindler has packed the non-league schedule against some of the top programs in the area including Constitution, Martin Luther King, Boys’ Latin, Bartram, Simon Gratz and Berks Catholic. He wants his team “to have the audacity to believe (they) can win” against those programs as well as Neumann-Goretti, Roman, St. Joe’s Prep and others in the Catholic League.

He knows the history of Conwell-Egan and feels he’ll be able to build on what Sciolla created.

“Conwell-Egan has struggled historically at times in the PCL [but] we’ve taken a huge step as a program [beginning] with Frank Sciolla and what he did,” Kindler said. “We’re going to respect all of our opponents because they deserve it especially in our league. We also need to be a team that demands respect.”