Chester’s Kyree Womack, left, and Larenzo Jerkins pressure Ryan’s David Wise in the second half Friday night at O’Hara. Chester came from behind to defeat Ryan 53-48 to advance to the PIAA Class 5A quarterfinals. (Pete Bannan – MediaNews Group).
By Matthew DeGeorge
The past hung heavy at Cardinal O’Hara High School Friday night.
For Chester, it was the memory of a dramatic win, a run that wasn’t, of a fallen brother memorialized on the basketball court. For Archbishop Ryan, there was the weight of a demolition of Chester in the state semifinals last year and the hunger that would undoubtedly spark on the opposite bench.
Then there was the future, which for the hundreds of boisterous fans in attendance wearing Chester orange-and-black, came wrapped in the 5-10 package that is Kyree Womack.
Womack played the hero again, with 11 fourth-quarter points to cash in the suffocating vise grip of Chester’s full-court press that finally squeezed out Archbishop Ryan in a 53-48 thriller in the PIAA Class 6A Round of 16.
“Big-time players make big-time shots,” Womack, a developing authority on the subject, said. “The ball was supposed to be in my hands (in the) fourth quarter. … I just thank my team for playing good defense and keeping the pressure on them. Game of runs, we didn’t break down.”