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Alikakos leads Hill past familiar foe Haverford in PAISAA championship

02/25/2018, 1:45am EST
By Tyler Sandora

Nick Alikakos (above) played his 10th career game against the Haverford School on Saturday afternoon. (Photo: Tommy Smith/CoBL)

Tyler Sandora (@tyler_sandora)
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For Nick Alikakos, The Haverford School is not a stranger on the hardwood.

Alikakos spent four years at Episcopal Academy, where he faced off against the rival Fords nine times over his career in the Inter-Academic League.

In the nine matchups -- eight in league play and one in the postseason -- Alikakos had a record of 6-3 against the Fords, and averaged 15 points a game. In his four-year career at EA, Alikakos scored over 1,500 points before doing a postgraduate year at the Hill School this season.

After the Blues beat the Westtown School in the semifinals of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) tournament on Friday night, it set up a state championship game against those Fords, Alikakos’s tenth and final matchup versus his old foe. Haverford didn’t lose a single senior to graduation last year, so this was almost an identical rotation which Alikakos played a year ago.

“Episcopal and Haverford have the biggest rivalry,” Alikakos said, “so I always view a game against Haverford as a bigger deal. I wanted to come out and play as hard as I could.”

This last game certainly went the way Alikakos would have wanted, as he dropped 20 points and Hill defeated The Haverford School 68-50, winning the PIASAA state championship for the first time since 2014.

“It feels good to beat those guys,” the 6-foot-7 forward added. “Student sections were talking a lot of smack towards me, so it feels good to win. It motivated me. We just came out here and wanted it more and played as hard as we possibly could. To come out here and execute like we did feels great.”

“I think that was one of the reasons he played so well today,” head coach Phil Canosa said on Alikakos. “He had that extra fire from being at Episcopal.”

Alikakos wasn’t the only player on the Hill (19-7) roster to notice how the student section treated a player who’s faced the Fords for four years.

“The crowd was very brutal with him,” senior Chase Audige said. “But Nick played like any other game. Played hard and we won.”

Last year in the semifinals, Alikakos and Episcopal defeated Hill, and got a chance to face Westtown in the championship. But Westtown, which featured two projected NBA lottery picks in Mo Bamba (Texas) and Cam Reddish (Duke), beat Episcopal soundly.

So Alikakos knew what it felt to lose what would have been his last ever high-school basketball game, if not for the post-grad year.

“[This year], coming back from a tough game against Westtown, a lot of people counted us out,” Alikakos said. “They didn’t think we would be here. We just trusted each other, and to come out here and win by almost 20 points felt really good. It feels a little better than I thought honestly.

“Especially losing in the state championship [last year] to Westtown, to come back this year and win it feels really good.”

Alikakos had it going from the start, scoring 10 points in this first half. On display Saturday night was an expanded version of Alikakos’s overall game, as he nailed two 3-pointers and even looked comfortable bringing the ball up the court on a fast break.

Hill only led by four points at halftime, but bursted out to a 17 point lead to end the third quarter. When Alikakos wasn’t scoring, fellow senior Chase Audige, a William & Mary commit, took over.

The athletic 6-4 combo guard added 15 points, including three powerful dunks, and one alley-oop in which Audige seemingly hung in the air before catching the delayed pass from his teammate and throwing it down.

“First half we came out flat and slow,” Audige said. “We knew we could put them away if we played defense and got and and ran. We did and we won the game.”

Another player doing a postgraduate year, Seth Maxwell, a 7-foot center, added 14 points in the victory. Maxwell spent four years at Abington Heights in the Scranton area before coming to Hill for a fifth year. 6-7 sophomore Caleb Dorsey scored nine points, and senior DaQuan Morris had eight.

This championship is the first for Canosa, who is filling in this season for for regular head coach Seth Eilberg, who is on a sabbatical leave for the year. Canosa was previously the associate head coach at the historic Pottstown institution.

“I inherited a great team, and they are the ones that did this,” Canosa said. “We have a great culture at Hill, so I am trying to keep the things going. I didn’t have to put in anything new, just kept rolling with the momentum that we had last year. I’m excited to hand this back to Seth next year, when he comes back.”

Hill graduates four seniors who played meaningful minutes, but return up to four more players who were part of the regular rotation this year.

But for now, the Blues will celebrate the victory, one which was extra sweet for Alikakos.

“This was our goal from the beginning,” Alikakos said. “Win the state championship. Feels very good to end my high school career like this.”


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