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By Josh Verlin

The bus rides were long. Too long, perhaps, for the Archbishop Carroll boys — but in a way, just long enough. A last-minute addition to the 2022 PIAA Class 4A state playoffs, Carroll found itself playing four games increasingly further and further from home, a group of 20-or-so teens and adults spending hours and hours together they hadn’t planned on spending, and enjoying every minute of it.

“That state run was phenomenal for us,” head coach Francis Bowe said, and it wasn’t because of the extra wins. “We drove three hours, so no one was like ‘I’m going home with my parents.’ We were all on the bus — and we got to know each other really well.”

Bowe learned, for example, that now-senior forward Blake Deegan can also serve as the team DJ, a crucial role on one long bus ride after another. He also found out that senior guard Dean Coleman-Newsome is not just a Division I basketball recruit but also a solid standup comic, not shy to take the proverbial mic and perform. 

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By Jared Leveson

Upper Darby finished last season with a 7-14 overall record, went 5-11 in Central League play, and finished in ninth place. 

It was a less than ideal 2021-2022 season.

The team added three new players last year, but their chemistry development and offseason workouts got hampered due to COVID-19 restrictions. The result was a roller-coaster-type year with big wins, disappointing losses, and “a lot of learning pains,” according to head coach Bob Miller.  

However, the 14-year head coach and his players believe this season will be different. The Royals had an uninterrupted offseason where their hardworking, talented and deep roster has grown together as teammates and friends. 

“With two years of Covid,” Miller said. “We weren’t able to get into our gym and get a lot of work.” 

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By Rich Flanagan

After the 2019 class of Jack Forrest, Steve Payne, Darryl Taylor, Matt O’Connor and Theo Henry had moved on, Gregg Downer went and did what any successful basketball coach does: develop the next crop of leaders to continue the legacy that he has established during his 33-year career at Lower Merion.

That group won three consecutive Central League titles, advanced to the district semifinals three times and won more games together than any class in Aces history. Downer knew it would take a bit of time as great players like the late Kobe Bryant, Ryan Brooks, B.J. Johnson, and others do not necessarily come into the program ready to compete for district and state titles right off the bat.

They have to be molded and taught how to deal with the increased expectations that come with becoming part of the Aces under a head coach who has won over 600 games. Downer has been preaching the same message to each new team since winning his first state title in 1996.

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By Josh Verlin

It was an injury that changed the course of not one but two seasons for Springfield (Delco.) girls’ basketball. When junior guard Lexi Aaron went down with a torn posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in the fifth game of the 2021-22 season, the Cougars were left short-handed and without their leading scorer, a significant disadvantage for a team that didn’t have a single senior on the roster.

But instead of folding, Ky McNichol’s team rallied. The Cougars ripped off seven straight wins to begin 2022, went 13-3 in the Central League, won 19 games overall and made it to the PIAA Class 5A quarterfinals, where they ran into Catholic League powerhouse and eventual state champs Cardinal O’Hara. 

“I think we all grew a lot last year as players and coaches,” said McNichol, in her ninth season coaching the Cougars. “We had to make an adjustment on the fly, we figured it out, how we were going to win basketball games […] We had a bunch of kids step up, fill some roles that we needed to fill, and they figured out a way to win.”

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By Joseph Santoliquito

The goal is simple: Winning the Philadelphia Catholic League championship at the Palestra. Getting there will be the tough part. Cardinal O’Hara coach Ryan Nemetz, who’s entering his fifth season, has a star player in 6-5 senior guard and Iona commit Izaiah Pasha and a surrounding cast of experienced players that could make that push this season.

Pasha is one of three starters returning with 6-foot senior guard Josh Coulanges and 6-8 junior forward Pearse McGuinn, in addition to Aasim “Flash” Burton, a 6-2 junior guard transfer who was an all-Philadelphia Public League choice playing for Math, Civics and Science.

The Lions finished 14-11 overall last season and 6-7 in the Catholic League, beating Bonner-Prendergast in the PCL playoffs before losing to eventual PIAA Class 6A state champion Roman Catholic in the Catholic League semifinals. The Lions lost to Dallas (54-46) in the second round of the PIAA Class 4A state playoffs.

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By Jack McCaffery

Because of the rumors, because of his instincts, because his program is so deep that it begins to develop players at the youngest ages and because he has come to know how high school basketball has been warped in the last decade, Keith Taylor had to know it was coming.

Anymore, the basketball coach at Chester High just reduces it all to a vaguely familiar slogan.

“What Chester makes,” he said, “other people take.”

Chester makes plenty. It is particularly adept at developing basketball players, and Taylor was lamenting the latest cost of that make-take dynamic, as high-major Clippers forward prospect Larenzo Jerkins has left after his sophomore season to attend Neumann-Goretti in South Philadelphia. A 6-5 battler with an anticipated growth spurt, Jerkins is a natural rim protector and timely scorer and would have been the key piece for the Clippers for the next two years. But even before his sophomore season, Jerkins was confirming that he was being wooed not by college recruiters but the high-school variety.

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