City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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In the past 10 season, Imhotep Charter head coach Andre Noble has led the Panthers to five state championships and six Public League championships, as well as a handful of District 12 trophies as well. Most if not all of those teams featured multiple Division I prospects, as well as a handful of others who went on to play at other levels of collegiate basketball.

So when he says that this year’s team could be his deepest yet, those are words not lightly spoken. And when Imhotep takes the court, they certainly back him up.

“We don’t miss a beat, eight or nine deep,” Noble said. “Maybe even 10.”

In an impressive 65-44 win over Roman Catholic to cap off the three-game City Play-By-Play Classic on Saturday evening at Jefferson University’s Gallagher Athletic Center, seven of the eight Panthers who saw the court got into the scoring column. The only one who didn’t, junior wing Dahmir Bishop, is a high-major Division I prospect with offers from the likes of Penn State, Temple and more.

The starting lineup alone features four Division I prospects and senior guard Bernard Lightsey, a popular Division II target. Off the bench came in two more juniors with Division I offers in Jamil Riggins Jr. and Karam Cummings, plus junior point guard Fatayn Wesley, who will certainly be playing collegiate ball at some level in two years. Not available on this particular night due to injury were two more seniors, Devontae Canty and Amear Johnson, who also won’t be done playing hoops after high school.

No matter who Noble subs in -- the lineup possibility are too numerous to mention -- Imhotep puts five future college hoops players on the floor. And aside from the 5-foot-9 Wesley and 5-11 Lightsey, all of them are 6-4 or taller.

“Practices are never lacking for a moment,” said Chereef Knox, a 6-6 junior and one of those future Division I players in the starting lineup. “The bench, the starters, even the people who don’t really play, the freshmen and them, just compete hard -- for minutes, just to win. We want to win, badly.”

Doing so would only be following in step with the Imhotep program, which has quickly risen to become one of the prominent powerhouses in the city and beyond despite the school’s opening only in the last 15 years.

Imhotep’s boys basketball team won its first state championship in 2009, behind future college standouts Sam Prescott (Marist/Mount St. Mary’s) and Will Adams (Kutztown), with David Appolon (Robert Morris) and Erik Copes (George Mason) as sophomore contributors. Two years later, Appolon and Copes led the Panthers to the first of three straight PIAA titles, with Brandon Austin leading the charge in 2012 and 2013.

This past season, the first in the new six-classification system, PIAA cruised to the 4A state title, winning each of its five games by no fewer than 19 points; the championship game was an 80-52 romp against an overmatched Strong Vincent squad out of Erie. That came after a much tougher battle against Martin Luther King in the Pub championship game, though the Panthers emerged with a 53-49 win, keeping alive a string of winning it in alternate years since 2009 with one exception (2010).

Gone from last year are two stud guards in Daron Russell (Rhode Island) and David Beatty (South Carolina), but the Imhotep train has stayed right on track.

Beating Roman improved ‘Tep to 6-0 on the season, with wins over N.J. powerhouses programs Roselle Catholic and Gill St. Bernard as well as now one of the top teams in the Catholic League under its belt.

But, of course, Noble is far from satisfied thus far.

“There’s a lot of areas of the game that we’re not doing a great job,” he said. “We’re not being physical throughout the whole game...we should be a better offensive rebounding team than we are, so we have to get better at some phases, and we’ve turned the ball over a little bit too much.”

Imhotep took a quarter to assert its will on Roman Catholic (2-3), which held a slim 17-16 lead at the end of the first quarter. But the Panthers won the second quarter by 10 to open up a 33-24 halftime lead; it was 49-32 after three and Roman never threatened in the fourth.

“I thought we started getting things around the rim, being physical, being tougher,” Noble said. “I just thought we were more physical in the second half, so I was happy with that. Because we felt like that’s the DNA of his team.”

Junior wing Donta Scott had 16 points, one of four Imhotep players in double figures. Sophomore big man Elijah Taylor had 13 and six rebounds; Knox and another 6-6 junior, Jamil Riggins Jr., had 10 apiece. Any of the other four who played -- and several of those who didn’t -- are capable of going for double figures on any given night.

What’s perhaps most impressive about all of it is that, in an era when seemingly more and more players are changing programs for a starting opportunity or more playing time, Imhotep kids stay put. Taylor, a 6-8 post with a Division I future, barely played last year. Several of those 6-5 juniors didn’t see the court as freshmen, and only were reserves as sophomores. None of them left.

“It’s the coaching staff,” Knox said. “You’re not going to trip up over not playing, you know your time is going to come and you’ve got to be patient. Imhotep, they’re going to be there for you, you’re not going to be a guy who’s there four years and they forget about you. They’re going to stick with you and try to get you better so you can be out there every day.”

The challenges don’t stop coming for Imhotep. The Panthers next head to Myrtle Beach, S.C. to play in the Beach Ball Classic, matching up against Bishop Gorman (Nev.) next Wednesday. In January, they’ll face La Lumiere (Ind.) at the Cancer Research Classic in Wheeling, W.Va. After that is the main stretch of Public League play, where their depth will be tested against the likes of King, MCS, Constitution and Mastery North.

But though Imhotep might be deep, they’re trying to keep their vision shallow.

“You’re not thinking forward to Beach Ball, not thinking forward to La Lumiere, not looking forward to the Pub championship,” Knox said. “We’re just taking it one game at a time.”