Photo by: Digital First Media
By Harry Chaykun
Bonner & Prendergast coach Jack Concannon didn’t want to look at how teams were seeded before the Friars’ game against District 3’s New Oxford Friday night in the PIAA Class 5A tournament.“Any team that gets this far is a good team,” Concannon said of the No. 9 seed opponent. “They must have won something. What did they make, 10 3s? And we only made one.”
As the Friars showed, games aren’t won only by 3-point shooting. Bonner & Prendergast (23-4), the District 12 champion, did enough other things to earn a 56-45 decision over the Colonials (20-9) to earn the chance to play in a second-round game Tuesday night. It’s the Friars’ first PIAA tournament win in program history, the Catholic League only joining the state tournament proceedings in 2008-09.
The Friars missed six shots and turned the ball over six times in the opening period and fell behind, 15-10. The used a better defensive effort to outscore New Oxford in the second period, 20-8. Junior Isaiah Wong, who filled up the statistics sheets with 22 points, 12 rebounds, seven steals and a pair of assists, was 4-for-4 from the floor — one from deep range — and added three free throws to get 12 of his points in that second period.