By Matthew DeGeorge
Devon Nelson lingered over the question in the immediate aftermath Friday night, and every millisecond seemed totally explicable.
How had Bonner & Prendergast – which led by six points early in the fourth quarter, which had threatened all night to run away from an objectively less talented Upper Moreland team, that had a shot to win the game in the final moments – seen its season end in the PIAA Class 5A quarterfinals? How had a team that so thoroughly dominated District 1 champion Upper Dublin on Tuesday allow the fourth-place finisher in the district to dictate pace, dictate the shots it took late and ultimately hang around long enough to sneak away with a 46-45 win and get within a victory of Hershey at the Friars’ expense?
“I think this was 100 percent a game we could have won,” Nelson said.
That’s the truth, even in the face of 21 points from Colson Campbell, even with 13 Friars turnovers and seven missed three throws, even as late Jakeem Carroll’s pull-up from the free-throw line with two seconds left hitting back iron and bouncing teasingly high but safely into the waiting hands of an earthbound Larry Hughes to run out the clock and send the Golden Bears, who had never won a states game before this tournament, to their first state semifinal.
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