City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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One year after playing in an overtime thriller to decide the Public League championship, Martin Luther King and Imhotep will meet up again in a title game matchup that seemed destined from the start of this season.

The Panthers and Cougars, who finished the regular season as the top two squads in the Public League’s ‘A’ division, will play on Sunday at 3 p.m. in the Palestra to determine this year’s league winner.

“I feel like we owe them from last year,” Martin Luther King senior guard Denelle Holly said.

The teams have met up twice since Imhotep’s 53-49 championship win against the Cougars last February with the Panthers winning both matchups--a 57-40 win on Dec. 14 and a 54-40 victory on Jan. 18.

In the first game, both teams were tied 3-3 after one quarter before Imhotep took a 15-14 lead into halftime. The Pantheres used a 24-14 third quarter to pull away. The second meeting went similarly. King led 15-7 after the first and took a 27-24 lead into halftime. Imhotep outscored the Cougars 20-4 in the third quarter to pull away in that one.

“Defensively, we’ll be good, but it’s the third quarter where we go on a long stretch without scoring,” Holly said. “That’s where we lose the game every game. Every time we play them, there’s a long stretch in the third quarter where we don’t score and they go on a 20-4 run and things like that. That’s where we lose the game.”

After losing to Constitution in its regular season finale, King cruised to wins against Mastery South, Boys’ Latin and Math, Civics & Sciences in the first three playoff rounds. They got their revenge on the Generals in South Philly on Tuesday night with a 49-45 win against Constitution to earn a spot in the championship game.

Senior forward Will McNair led the way with 15 points and 12 rebounds for the Cougars. Imhotep head coach Andre Noble said while the 6-foot-9 forward’s presence in the paint is obviously a key for the game, his squad matches up a lot better than other teams in the league. The Panthers have several players with size and length including, Elijah Taylor (6-8), Donta Scott (6-7) and Chereef Knox (6-6).

“We have a lot of size around the lane,” Noble said. “Will is the biggest kid in the league, but we have Elijah, who’s played him real well and other guys too...We are a team that has really good length. He doesn’t dominate us in the way that he does to other teams in our league.”

After a perfect regular season in the Public League, with only one game decided by single digits, Imhotep put up lopsided victories against Ben Franklin and Parkway Northwest in its first two playoff games. The next two didn’t go as smooth as the Panthers held off a late scare from Bartram in the quarterfinal and outlasted Mastery North, 54-46, in Tuesday night’s semifinal.

The Imhotep squad is littered with Division I talent. Noble said they have not performed up to their capability in the team’s past two games.

With King led by an experienced trio of seniors in McNair, Holly and forward Jerry Andrews-Fulton, the Panthers will likely have to put together a better performance on Sunday.

“We practice hard,” Noble said. “Our practices are really competitive. At times, we haven’t brought that level of energy into the game.That’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out and get better. I think that’s what the struggle’s been is trying to make sure we compete to the level that we can....We just have to be loose, run around and compete at a really high level.”

Imhotep has won the title six times in the past nine years, including three in a row from 2009-11. The Panthers haven’t won back-to-back titles since, losing in each of the even years.

King head coach Sean Colson is taking his team to its third championship game in five seasons. The Cougars haven’t won the Public League title since he led them to a championship in 2014.

“We’re not really worried about last year,” Holly said. “We took last year as a lesson and we learned from that. This year, we’re just going in hungry, humble and we just want to win."