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By Matthew DeGeorge

As they sat at the dais Monday night, finishing each other’s responses to reporters’ questions, the teamwork aspect came through loud and clear from Roman Catholic.So it was as the clock wound down on a Catholic League championship game at the Palestra, the Cahillites trying to run out the last 98 seconds against Bonner & Prendergast, that Hakim Hart glided out to the right corner, quietly but vigilantly. Never mind that the junior wing hadn’t scored in the fourth quarter of a tie game, or that every eye on the building would gravitate toward the ball in Lynn Greer III’s hand or the high screen set by Seth Lundy.

When Greer drove and drew a help defender, Hart was ready to do what the Roman basketball ethos commands, to be ready.

Hart’s lay-in off glass with 1.6 seconds left settled a scintillating if frenetic final, a 51-49 decision for Roman.

“I knew when I was watching Lynn up top, he’s breaking his man down,” Hart said. “So in my head, I was thinking he’s going to be by him, I’ve got to be ready to shoot.”

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By Rich Flanagan

Lynn Greer III had gone through this moment in his head numerous times before.

The clock was winding down and he was going to be facilitating the offense on his team’s final possession. He recalled practices in Roman Catholic’s historic gym on the school’s third floor where he would take the ball end-to-end with only seconds remaining. For a player who had started 23 games as a freshman and was named a finalist for the 2017 USA Basketball Men’s U16 National Team, he had not yet had the ball in his hands in the closing seconds.

That all changed on the floor of the Palestra in the Philadelphia Catholic League championship game.     

With seven seconds remaining, Greer drove and found teammate Hakim Hart for the go-ahead basket to seal Roman Catholic’s 51-49 victory over Bonner-Prendergast and clinch the program’s third league title in four years. The Cahillites began their final possession with over 1:20 remaining on the clock but took as much time off the clock as possible to get off the final shot.

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By Aaron Carter

Sometimes reality is much sweeter than the dream.
Roman Catholic sophomore guard Lynn Greer III experienced just that Monday night at the Palestra after making the game-winning play that gave the Cahillites a 51-49 victory over Bonner-Prendergast for the Catholic League championship.
“I envisioned it,” Greer III said behind a postgame sea of purple after delighting the capacity crowd to a thriller. “It’s crazier than I imagined.”

By Rich Flanagan

Bonner-Prendergast head coach Jack Concannon and Roman Catholic headman Matt Griffin have a plethora of memories of the Palestra dating back to their respective childhoods. For each of them, it started with Big 5 basketball games.

Concannon recalls the “Saturday night [Big 5] doubleheaders. I remember our CYO teams playing before the doubleheaders at different times then afterward we would be the ball boys for the doubleheader when I was in fifth and sixth grade.”

For Griffin, he remembers consistently being in the Cathedral of College Basketball during his father’s tenure as St. Joseph’s University head basketball coach from 1990-95. He states, “Up until his last year, I was the ball boy and those games were just the greatest basketball atmosphere to be a part of. The Palestra has always been a special place to me because I grew up watching games there.”

The Big 5 brought about the inception of each head coach’s appreciation and allure for the majestic arena but the Philadelphia Catholic League was where they displayed their playing abilities on its hardwood floors. Concannon scored 21 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in leading the Friars to the 1983 PCL title, its first since 1960. That began a string of three league crowns in the 1980s for Bonner-Prendergast, the last of which occurred in 1988 behind a PCL title-game record 30 points from Brian Daly. That was the last time Bonner-Prendergast reached the title game.

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By Rick O’Brien

Roman Catholic has captured 30 Catholic League basketball championships, including two of the last three. Bonner-Prendergast, meanwhile, last claimed the first-place hardware 30 years ago.

The Cahillites look to add to their already crammed trophy case at Broad and Vine Streets, and the Friars seek to end a lengthy drought when the teams square off for the crown at 8:30 p.m. Monday at the Palestra.
On the girls’ side, defending champion Cardinal O’Hara takes on Neumann-Goretti for top honors at the hallowed arena at 6:30 p.m.

After an eight-year dry spell, Roman won back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2016. It is making its seventh appearance in the final in the last 13 years.
In the teams’ regular-season meeting six weeks ago, the visiting Friars nipped the Cahillites, 68-66, in overtime.
Matt Griffin’s squad is paced by 6-foot-6 junior wing Seth Lundy, sophomore point guard Lynn Greer, 6-3 senior guard Allen Betrand, and 6-5 junior forward Hakim Hart.

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By Matthew DeGeorge

In many ways, the skinny one-point edge that Chester carried into halftime over Sun Valley Saturday night was the least of the ways in which the Clippers’ execution deviated from the game plan.The Clippers’ defense wasn’t as suffocating as usual. The jump shots the Clippers settled for were too frequent and too wayward. And 90 percent of Chester’s points came from three players, an uncharacteristic lack of balance for a program that prides itself on sharing the wealth.

So knowing that something had to change after the break, senior forward Timothy Johnston figured, why not be the source of that improvement?

Johnston scored 11 points in the third quarter and 13 in the second half as No. 3 Chester pulled away from sixth-seeded Sun Valley, 69-56, in the District 1 Class 5A quarterfinals.

The win books Chester (18-6) a spot in the District 1 semifinals Wednesday at Temple against No. 2 Bishop Shanahan and a berth in the PIAA tournament. Sun Valley (17-7) drops into playbacks, where it will grab one of the seven states spots on offer with a win in either of its next two games, starting with Ches-Mont rival and seventh-seeded Rustin in Aston Wednesday.

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Webmaster’s note: The Chester vs. Sun Valley game was our Game-of-the-Week and can be heard on our Archives link by clicking on the player below

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