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By Jack McCaffery

As the head coach at Penn Wood High for 11 years, Clyde Jones usually could figure out most Del Val League basketball mysteries.

One, though, kept him puzzled: How could rival Chichester, so often blessed with good players and tucked in ever-basketball-fertile Delaware County, never have qualified for a single PIAA state tournament?

To find out, he accepted the Eagles’ coaching job five years ago, fought through a rebuilding process, and by Saturday, helped put an end to that question.

With a swarming defense, a late three-point shot from Zaiyin Keys and 16 points from Akhir Keys, Chichester would nip host Sun Valley, 37-36, in a PIAA District 1 Class 5A playback to secure its first state tournament berth.

Behind Jones, who coached Penn Wood to the 2009 PIAA Class AAAA state championship and later took Girard College into the tournament before accepting the Chichester job in 2018, it didn’t take long.

“It’s the reason I wanted to come to Chi,” he said. “They had talent and I just thought it was a budding basketball community. To get an opportunity to start or rebuild a program was just something I was looking for. And being in the Del Val for so long, I knew the area, so I said, ‘I’ll give this a shot.’”

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By Austin Hertzog

The Spring-Ford girls basketball coaching staff occasionally tells its team to ‘rip off the rear-view mirror’ as a way to not dwell on a mistake or the past.

It was a rip-off-the-mirror sort of first half Saturday for the reigning district champion Rams thanks to Central League champion Garnet Valley in their District 1 Class 6A quarterfinal matchup.

“No matter what happens in a game, if you make a mistake we tell them, ‘Rip off the rear view mirror,’” said Rams head coach Mickey McDaniel. “You have 0.3 seconds to be upset with that mistake but then you’ve got to move on.”

The Rams had a bit longer at halftime to dwell upon a 12-point first half that came courtesy of the Jaguars’ devastating 2-3 zone defense, but, like directed, it was left to the past.

Sophomore Katie Tiffan was Saturday’s glass shatterer with an individual 12-point run to start the third quarter that sent No. 11 Spring-Ford on its way to a 40-30 win over No. 14 Garnet Valley to advance to its fifth straight District 1 semifinal.

“Second half we really brought it to them,” said sophomore Anna Azzara. “Great effort on the defensive end and on the offensive end. We were knocking down our shots more than we were in the first half.”

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By Bryan Davis

The boisterous and celebratory chant emanating for the visitor’s locker room at Radnor High School captured the mood quite succinctly.

“Villa to the Ship! Villa to the Ship!”

Villa Maria Academy earned that celebration after rallying in the second half to knock off Radnor, 47-40, in the semifinals of the District 1 Class 5A Girls Basketball Tournament on Friday. Maura McHugh keyed the comeback by notchinbg 12 of her game-high 14 points in the second half.

The seventh-seeded Hurricanes (13-11) will face Bishop Shanahan in the championship at Temple University on March 5. It will be the Hurricanes’ first appearance in the final since winning it all in 2019.
“That was a really gutsy win by our team,” said Villa Maria coach Kathy McCartney said. “We dug in on defense, turned them over a lot, converted some stuff in the second half that we didn’t in the first half. A gutsy win.”

Villa outscored the sixth-seeded Raptors (15-8) 21-11 in the final quarter, holding them to 4-of-12 shooting and four turnovers — 17 for the game.

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Marple Newtown kept its state playoff hopes alive Friday night.

Haley Levy scored a game high 16 points to lead the No. 2 Tigers over third-seeded Upper Moreland, 50-35, in a District 1 Class 5A playback contest Friday. Marple next plays Harriton for fifth place and a berth to the PIAA tournament.

Nikki Mostardi netted 14 points and Mary O’Brien added 11 for the Tigers.

EPISCOPAL ACADEMY 65, NOTRE

DAME 45 » Riley Cassidy went 13-for-15 at the foul line and finished with 25 points to lead the Churchwomen past the Irish in the quarterfinal round of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association tournament.

Amanda Purcell provided 15 points in the winning cause. EA will meet Penn Charter in the semifinals next weekend. Katie Halligan and Annie Greek paced Notre Dame with 11 points apiece.

By Matthew DeGeorge

After a leniently refereed first half yielded just nine total fouls, 10 were whistled in the third quarter, leaving Faccenda and McKee with four each. McKee put Garnet Valley up, 36-34, with a second-chance bucket with 4:29 to play, but he fouled out on the next trip, hacking Hargrove as he banked in a shot.

Hargrove’s basket came on the sixth possession of the quarter, a testament to how the Jags slowed the pace. They were 9-for-15 shooting from the field in the first half, making Methacton extend out, hoping to open cutting lanes through a lanky defense. Jake Sniras not only put Garnet Valley up 34-32 on their first look in the fourth, but they lopped 1:14 off the clock in doing so.

“Game by game, we get more comfortable with it,” Koehler said of the slower pace. “It’s not something as a Garnet Valley team that we’ve been used to the last for the past few years. So certainly some adjusting to be done, but we’ve got a good group of guys and we’re getting better at it.”

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By Jack McCaffery

He could have settled for a verbal outline. He had the option to pick up the passion in his pre-game speech. He might have mixed in an additional film. He might have tried it all, given the straits his Haverford High basketball team would wander into Friday night.

Fords coach Keith Heinerichs, however, took the message to another level. And that would have been him, out there Thursday, running pre-practice sprints with his players, maybe huffing, perhaps puffing, but shouting out the reality with each determined stride: Lose the next one to visiting West Chester Henderson, and it’s over.

“I was just trying to get the intensity up,” said the Fords’ coach. “I wanted to make sure they wanted it.

“It wasn’t the first time I did that,” he continued, smiling. “But it was the first in a lonnnnnnggg time.”

By the time the Fords outpaced the Warriors, 63-41, in the playback round of the PIAA District 1 Class 6A tournament, it was clear Heinerichs’ ploy didn’t hurt. Though young Henderson hung around early, the Fords gave them 32 minutes of relentless defensive pressure to improve to 18-6 and win a spot in the state tournament.

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