Photo by: Digital First Media
By Matthew DeGeorge
Just in case his play didn’t deliver the gist of it, Tyree Corbett had one more message to share Saturday afternoon at South Philadelphia High.Corbett and his Lincoln teammates had heard the rationalizations explaining away last week’s District 12 championship game win over Roman Catholic, the Catholic League champ. He’d gathered whispers about luck, about a Roman hangover following a last-second win in a tense Catholic League finale, about how a city Class 6A title wasn’t all that important and maybe even fluky.
The Rail Splitters heard all of it. And in response, Corbett and company delivered a stirring testimonial.
The final margin showed a 67-46 win over Upper Darby in the opener of the PIAA Class 6A tournament. But a game where the margin crept to 37 points early in the fourth quarter wasn’t nearly that close, and Corbett made sure that was known.
“We came out here knowing we were going to blow them out,” Corbett said. “We sent a message that there’s no luck. Any person or any time you come out and play basketball, we play like it’s their last, and that’s what we did today. We’re going to play every game like it’s their last. We’re going to play hard and show everybody that we can’t be beat and we can beat every team and Roman wasn’t just luck.”