City of Basketball Love

Matt Chandik (@MChandik26)
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There are purple shirts everywhere you look in the Camden cheering section, all adorned with the previous years where the Panthers climbed to the top of the New Jersey basketball mountain to come away with a state title.

There’s also a saying, “Chasing 12”, which reminds everyone what every year’s goal is. It’s not hard to imagine that saying, “Chasing 13”, with 2017 as the latest state title, would be on there if not for Corey Greer’s injury last year.

Greer tore his ACL three games into his junior campaign last season, and from that time until this past November, he longed to get back on the court. Having to sit and watch his teammates get close to a title and fall was agonizing, especially with the feeling of helplessness washing over him.

“It was hard,” Greer said, “not being able to help my team. There were a lot of things going on where I couldn’t help my team, but I just had to stick to it. There were a lot of things going on in the summer, a lot of distractions, so it’s just good to have basketball back.”

Saturday, he supplied the heroics for the Panthers, cashing in on a 3-pointer at the buzzer in overtime to give Camden a 74-71 win over Westtown School.

Give Greer all of the style points for it, too, because he was the one who got the ball for Camden. Westtown had the ball as time dwindled down, but Greer got a piece of a pass intended for Noah Collier and took it the other way. He then dribbled behind his back to elude five-star Duke signee Cam Reddish, pulled up at the 3-point line and calmly canned the shot to set off a wild celebration on the court at the Kobe Bryant Gymnasium at Lower Merion.

“Once I got the ball in my hands and gathered myself, I knew it was going in,” Greer said. “You’ve basically got the whole city here, big gym, big shot. It’s probably the biggest game-winner I’ve hit before. I’ve hit a couple, but that’s by far the biggest.”

And, Camden hopes, it won’t be the last.

“We came in here to win,” Greer said. “As long as we did what we knew to do, we knew we could come in and beat them. We’re dogs. We just kept fighting. They were hitting a lot of shots - a lot of crazy shots - but we’re dogs and we just kept fighting until the end.”

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Much like Greer, T.J. Berger missed most of last season with an injury.

Then a freshman, it would have been tough for him to habitually play major minutes on a team that featured Reddish, Texas freshman sensation Mo Bamba and top-40 recruit Brandon Reynolds, who’s routinely coming off the bench at Arizona.

Despite that, it’s never good when you miss the year with a pair of stress fractures. He had a stress fracture in his back and missed almost the entire AAU campaign, then followed it up with a stress fracture in his knee that caused him to miss a month and a half this fall. It wouldn’t have been out of the question to see Berger be eased into the lineup, but a midseason lineup change sparked the Moose.

“We were 9-7 and we moved TJ from off the bench to starting at the 1,” Westtown coach Seth Berger, TJ’s father, said. “Our scoring’s gone up by 15 points a game and he’s really distributed the ball well. He gets the ball up the floor and he’s controlled turnovers really well. With TJ on the ball, I think it opens up space for Cam and Jalen Gaffney. Before, they were playing a lot of 1-on-1, 1-on-1 and a half, but he gets the ball up the floor so quickly that there a lot more 1-on-1 situations. They’re so talented that if you put those guys in 1-on-1 situations, they can really score.”

The younger Berger came out of the gates quickly, breaking a defender’s ankles and lofting a 3-ball home on the first play of the game. He finished with 16 points and five assists for the Moose, never looking overwhelmed by the boisterous pro-Camden crowd. He also nailed a half-court shot at the half to push Westtown’s lead to 13. There’s little doubt that Westtown’s offense is in good hands for 2-and-a-half more years with Berger running the show.

“I talk to the coaches all the time about what I have to work on, but I’m also putting a ton of shots, working on my ballhandling a lot because I knew I had a big burden of handling the ball for most of the game,” Berger said. “I work on coming off of ball screens, I’m watching a lot of film with the coaches, little technical things. (The talent around me) makes it so much easier. Cam’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. He’s the best player in his class. Jake’s going to Indiana. He works so hard. We have so many talented guys. Sometimes, I can just throw them the ball and let them operate.”

Reddish was strong early, dropping 20 of his 25 points in the first half after hitting seven of his first nine shots. Forrester was everywhere in overtime, twice jumping into passing lanes for steals and scoring three of the Moose’s four points in overtime. They’re part of the present, but Berger is definitely a big part of the Westtown future.

“(Berger) has definitely stepped up,” said Forrester, who finished with 10 points, eight rebounds and a pair of blocks. “In the second half, he’s been hitting a lot of big shots, scoring a lot of extra points that we need for sure. The offense has been the same, but whenever he’s open, he’s shooting.”

He’s usually making, too.