Category: Latest News

By Matthew De George

In the many twists and turns of Tuesday night’s PIAA Class AAAA girls basketball semifinal, the contributions of Cardinal O’Hara’s Kristen Denoncour could easily get overshadowed.

It isn’t necessarily a new feeling for the junior forward. And while even the boxscore of O’Hara’s 48-41 win over North Penn barely affords Denoncour a passing glance, she remains a sizeable if understated cog in the Lions’ run to the Friday’s state final in Hershey.

Blink and you might have missed Denoncour’s statistical input Wednesday night — two rebounds, one block, no shot attempts. She played sparingly, a few minutes in the second quarter with Hannah Nihill nursing two fouls, then spot duty in the second half to bolster O’Hara’s defense down low.

But Denoncour is one of the foundational elements that helps the talented guards flourish. And when O’Hara runs up against defending state champion Cumberland Valley Friday night (Giant Center, 6 p.m.), she could occupy a big role, literally and figuratively.

Denoncour flies under the radar with all of O’Hara’s scoring threats and Division I talents. But she does a lot of the dirty work that gives those attack-minded perimeter players freedine to operate.

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By Matthew De George

When Linus McGinty convened the Cardinal O’Hara huddle after three quarters in a tie game Tuesday evening, he had good news and bad.

The bad news was that forward Mary Sheehan had yet to get on track against North Penn in the PIAA Class AAAA semifinal. The good news was that even without her, the Lions were on level terms with eight minutes to play.

And the better news was that a player of Sheehan’s caliber had no intention of continuing to go so quietly.

Sheehan came to life in the fourth quarter, scoring seven of her nine points and powering O’Hara to the state final with a 48-41 win at Spring-Ford High School.

The District 12 champs (26-3) advance to Friday’s final at Hershey’s Giant Center, where they’ll meet defending champion Cumberland Valley. The Eagles eked by North Allegheny, 43-42, Tuesday night, on a pair of last-second free throws.

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The Reading Eagle –

James Jackson scored a game-high 32 points as top-ranked Allderdice pulled away in the second half for a 70-45 victory over Reading High in a PIAA Class AAAA semifinal tonight at Chambersburg.The Red Knights (28-4) trailed by just a point at halftime but were overwhelmed on the boards 25-14 by the Dragons (28-1) in the second half. Allderdice advances to meet Roman Catholic in the state title game Saturday at Giant Center at 7.

The Dragons used a unique diamond-and-one defense to shut down Reading scoring leader Lonnie Walker IV. He didn’t make a field goal until the fourth quarter and finished with a season-low six points on just eight shots.“I said all along, I don’t mind losing to a team that’s better than us, and they’re better than us,” said Reading coach Rick Perez.

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By Stephen Pianovich

If Plymouth Whitemarsh was going to beat Roman Catholic on Tuesday night, it was going to need a monster game from Xzavier Malone. And for a quarter, the Colonials got that.

Malone, a senior guard, went off for nine points in the first eight minutes and Plymouth Whitemarsh led by as many as five in the first quarter. But then the Cahillites locked down on Malone, locked in offensively and imposed their will in the middle two quarters.

Roman pulled away from the District 1 champs for a 64-45 victory in the PIAA Class AAAA semifinals.

The Cahillites (28-4) will try to defend their state title against Pittsburgh powerhouse Allderdice in the Class AAAA championship game on Saturday in Hershey. Meanwhile, Plymouth Whitemarsh’s season comes to a close at 31-4 with both a SOL and District 1 title to boast.

While multiple Cahillites were tasked with helping to slow down Malone, who still finished with a game-best 21 points, chief among them was D’Andre Vilmar. The junior guard often denied Malone the ball and was one of the reasons the Colonials were limited to a combined 15 points in the second and third quarters after scoring 17 in the first.

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By Michael Bullock

“Yes, Coach, I’ll do whatever it is to win to get to Hershey.”

Those declarative words served as Tim Jackson’s response earlier this week when Allderdice head coach Buddy Valinsky approached the athletic 6-3 senior wing with a defensive schematic designed ostensibly to collar one particular adversary.

And when Reading’s Lonnie Walker wandered on to the floor — surrounded by thousands of screaming fans — the 6-5 junior soon found himself playing tag with Jackson as the all-or-nothing scrap between a pair of Pennsylvania’s hoops heavies played out at Chambersburg High School’s crammed Field House.

Had Walker taken a seat — even for a mere 30 seconds or so — Jackson likely would have squirmed in between several Red Knights and joined him on the bench.

Yet while the determined Jackson carried out his ever-so-important role with remarkable effectiveness, his twin brother, James, was fueling an Allderdice attack that really heated up in the second half when the Dragons’ lethal transition game enabled the Pittsburgh City League champs to break open a tight contest and pull away to a 70-45 victory in a PIAA Class AAAA semifinal-round encounter.

“We just came to play,” James Jackson said.

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By Peter Schnatz

Highly-touted Reading junior Lonnie Walker knew the game was in the bag the moment the ball left his fingertips and swished through the net as the third-quarter horn sounded at Temple University’s Liacouras Center Saturday afternoon.
Walker’s wicked step-back 3-pointer over the reach of Chester’s Marquis Collins was his way of telling the Clippers, “Thanks for playing.”
Sure, Chester didn’t do itself any favors in a season-ending, 73-64 defeat to the District Three champions, but Walker made a huge difference.
Turnovers, poor foul shooting and a bevy of missed opportunities in their comfort zone — the paint — led to the Clippers’ demise before a crowd of mostly Reading fans. Saturday marked the first time Chester has lost in the PIAA quarterfinal round since 1999. The Clippers are 28-3 all-time in the Elite Eight of the state tourney.
“They played smart basketball, played to their strengths,” Chester coach Larry Yarbray said. “A lot of times they got Lonnie in transition and when he wasn’t able to get uncontested looks he passed to open shooters. They took their time (and) they were real patient, plus they made foul shots. That was the difference of the game.”
Walker could feel the electricity when he sank the trey at the end of the third quarter. He left his shooting wrist hang in the air for a few moments after he extended Reading’s advantage to 12 points.
It was the highlight of a stupendous performance by Walker, who is being recruited by UCLA and Villanova, among other Division I programs.
He’ll have his pick.
“It transfers into the fourth quarter,” Walker said of the buzzer-beater. “It gets everyone pumped up. Making that 3-pointer made us feel as though we had the upper hand as of (that moment). For some reason we had the home crowd, so that helped. We just played our game and that’s the main key.

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By Peter Schnatz

When the dust settled at Temple University’s Liacouras Center Saturday afternoon, the granular aspects of a Chester season that just ended at the hands of Reading obscured the Clippers’ underlying realities.
To get to the PIAA quarterfinals is a monumental achievement. Just ask the 4,000 or so Reading fans who trekked to North Broad St. to boisterously fete their Red Knights’ 73-64 victory. For Chester to return within three wins of a state title after a barely-.500 season is the kind of accomplishment a coach lists as the first bullet point on his resume.
The mind-boggling stats that swirl around the Clippers — that Saturday was the program’s 31st state quarterfinal, that it hadn’t lost in one since 1999, a run of 11 straight wins in a do-or-die game that had gradually lost that second option — hardly dampen that.
But walking off the court for the final time, the Clippers had plenty to lament. For a program that catalogues its history like few others, the final summation of the 2015-16 bunch defies tidy categorization.
Everything seems to be couched in qualifiers. Chester had a great season … for a team that was 14-11 last year and started 2-5 this season. Chester really hit its stride … though the loss to Plymouth Whitemarsh in the District One final and Saturday’s setback, both at Liacouras, temper that praise.
Chester all-time squads fall into several classifications. Some were defined by a star player, a Jameer Nelson or a Zain Shaw. Some were team-centric through and through, one that made you marvel at how a workmanlike assembly of no-names obliterated competition and created a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts.

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By Josh Verlin

As usual, Temple’s Liacouras Center was a sea of red for a big-time basketball game.

Except it wasn’t the Owls that had fans packing the lower bowl of the 10,000-seat facility on Saturday afternoon.

It was Reading’s Red Knights that were the main draw, a PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal matchup against fellow state high school powerhouse Chester drawing thousands of spectators to North Broad Street.

And even though the Reading players know how much they mean to the community surrounding one of the biggest schools in the state, walking out into that supportive crowd with Chester only half the distance away set the tone.

“That’s really surprising, knowing it’s all the way out in Philly,” senior guard Khary Mauras said. “We look up in the stands and see all our supporters and it’s great–but once the game starts, we just focus on what’s between the lines.”

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By Matthew De George

Two and a half months have elapsed since Chester, in search of its customarily rigorous nonleague slate, took the inter-district trip to Reading Dec. 23.

Both teams have evolved since that 69-57 triumph by the Red Knights at the Geigle Complex. That growth portends a compelling renewal of acquaintances in Saturday’s PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal at Temple University’s Liacouras Center at noon.

The teams that collided back in December were both undeniably talented and figured to factor into the PIAA’s March picture, Chester first needing to banish an uncharacteristically boisterous chorus of doubters after last season’s rare failure to qualify for states. But neither squad had quite figured things out yet.

While the game failed to serve as a turning point for either, that juncture lay just around the bend.

Reading would lose its next outing against Maryland’s Clinton Christian, compounding losses to Coatesville and Archbishop Wood two weeks earlier. Since, the Red Knights (27-3) have rattled off 22 straight wins. Only twice in that streak — against Conestoga, then Carlisle in the District 3 tournament — has an opponent gotten within single digits, both in overtime contests. The next nearest scrape was an 11-point triumph over Central York in the District 3 final.

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By Josh Verlin

When the PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinal locations were announced, Bensalem HS didn’t seem to be the best fit to host Reading vs. Chester.

First there was the location, in Chester’s home District 1–though Bensalem is certainly nowhere near Chester.

On top of that, Bensalem’s gym didn’t seem quite big enough to hold a game between the District 1 runner-up Clippers and District 3 champion Red Knights, whose two fanbases are amongst the largest and most devoted in the state.

So within three hours of the original announcement, the venue was moved to Temple’s Liacouras Center, whose 10,000 seats could be filled with the Chester and Reading faithful on Saturday at noon.

“I’d like to thank the PIAA for making that accommodation and really acknowledging both of our followings and our communities,” Reading head coach Rick Perez said. “This gives everybody a fair chance with the least stress possible to enjoy the game, not only the people from the Reading and Chester community but people who just enjoy watching basketball.

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