City of Basketball Love

Tyler Sandora (@tyler_sandora)

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In the PIAA 6A state tournament last year, Downingtown West to Harrisburg in the first round. All offseason, head coach Stuart Ross has been looking back on that loss, and was gearing up to try and make a return to that point in the season.

But this year, things haven’t gone as planned. And now he’s got a different problem to worry about; qualifying for the district tournament.

Downingtown West has lost non-conference games to Methacton, Academy Park, Milton Hershey, and Harrisburg. Add that on top of the fact that the Whippets had to play Bishop Shanahan, Coatesville, and Downingtown East twice in the Ches-Mont National Division, and the Whippets sit at 5-6 in the conference with one game left to play next week.

“We figured it would be sink or swim with our schedule,” Ross said. “We would either do really well, or just barely hold onto a spot in districts.”

It turned out to be the latter. A concern that was originally about making it farther than the first round in states, had suddenly turned into a concern about even playing after the regular season.

The Whippets were ranked No. 24 in the unofficial district rankings going into the weekend; only 24 out of the 39 teams in the district’s largest classification make the tournament. Despite beating North Penn 60-55 on Saturday, the Whippets sat still in the final projected spot.

“We’ve been up and down, and have went through a lot of adversity, which is why we are where we are,” Ross said.

Downingtown West was in its biggest slump of the year entering Saturday afternoon’s contest against North Penn; having lost its last four game dating back to a defeat at the hands of Coatesville on January 25.

“It was a bad time,” senior Greg Barton said. “Everybody just wasn’t clicked in, and we weren’t playing as a team. Everybody was just looking for themselves. Playing time, not getting their shots up, not scoring as much as they wanted.

“We were worried about the little things and not the bigger picture, which is winning.”

Will Howard led the way with 19 points for the Whippets (10-11, 5-6), but the 6-foot-5 sophomore was limited in the final minutes of the game due to foul trouble. Barton scored 16, and nailed eight free throws in the final quarter to ensure the victory.

The rest of the scoring was pretty even across the board, Davis Reardon and Jackson Lundberg both have five; Naseem Roberson and Stuart McAvoy rounded out the rotation with three apiece. West went 12 players deep into its bench, due to the amount of fouls in the game.

For North Penn (11-9, 5-5), senior David Robinson, a 6-5 senior and transfer from Academy of the New Church scored 20. Chris Coleman tallied 12 and junior A.J. Mitchell added 11.

“North Penn has a great team, and they were higher than us in districts, so it was a huge win,” Ross said. “I knew how hard it would be last year when I scheduled it. Good preparation, good competitiveness, and we came out with a win.”

Funny enough, even through North Penn lost, it moved up one place to no. 20 in the district rankings, due to the formula which includes points given to teams based on winning percentage of opponents. Downingtown West, which won, stayed still in the rankings.

North Penn will end its regular season with games against Central Bucks South and Pennridge. Both teams beat North Penn earlier in the year.

“Yesterday at practice we had a long talk about bringing the fire back into games,” Barton said, “and today I feel like we brought it. We came up with the win which was important.”

During the losing streak, and the low points of the season, Ross saw some players lose confidence, or show signs of in the locker room. When you have high expectations, and don’t play like you thought you would, a lack of confidence will happen.  

“We were having some heads fall down, and bad body spirits,” Ross said. “Defensively, we’ve been having some breakdowns. We need to continue to rebound the ball well. In the losses, we kind of got away from that.”

The Whippets will close out their regular season this Thursday against West Chester East, which is 2-8 in conference play. Some other teams whose district hopes will be revealed over the next few days are Perkiomen Valley (22nd in districts), Central Bucks East (23), Avon Grove (25), and Souderton (26).

The Whippets are not in contention for the Ches-Mont playoffs anymore, so it’s districts or bust. Since non-area opponents’ records haven’t been added to the formula yet, it’s still impossible to know if Downingtown West will be in the district tournament as of right now or not. All they can do is win their final few games and hope.

“I think people are going to look at our seed and our record,” Barton said, “and think, ‘oh this is going to be a breeze. But I think we are going to be a sleeper in districts.”