Delcohoops.com

By Aaron Carter

Kevin Funston called Bonner-Prendergast athletic director Joe Lake on Monday morning on an unrelated matter and got some unexpected but welcome news about the school’s search for a boys’ basketball coach.

“He said, ‘I’m happy you called. You beat me to the punch. I was gonna call to tell you that you’re the next Bonner-Prendie coach,’ ” Funston recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a good way to start the week!’ ”

For the last four years, Funston was an assistant coach under former B-P coach Jack Concannon, who stepped down after last season.

Funston, who graduated from St. Joseph’s Prep in 2006 and went to the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as team manager under Jamie Dixon, has nearly a decade of coaching experience. He also had stops as an assistant at Lycoming College and Indiana (Pa.) and eventually returned to the Catholic League as the junior-varsity coach at Archbishop Carroll under Paul Romanczuk, who also stepped down after last season.

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By Mike White

More and more school superintendents have recently called for the PIAA to have separate postseason tournaments for public and Catholic/private/charter schools. Now, two state legislators who sit on a committee that oversees the PIAA believe separate tournaments deserve consideration and the public vs. private issue needs to be looked at further.

Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Ambridge, met Wednesday morning with New Castle Area Schools superintendent John Sarandrea and attorney Larry Kelly, who are spearheading an effort across the state to have the PIAA possibly create separate tournaments. Critics feel public schools with geographical boundaries are at a competitive disadvantage against private/Catholic/charter schools that have no boundaries to attract students. Over the past three seasons, 69 percent of the PIAA boys and girls basketball champions have been teams from non-boundary schools, and many from the Philadelphia area.

“My view of this rises to the level that we need to start having conversations [on the oversight committee] about this issue and I will be making a request that we have hearings in the future,” Costa said. “I’m moving toward the need to address this issue. What we can do and what anything might look like, I can’t speak to that. But the path we have been going down has really created a competitive imbalance that I don’t think is in the best interest of overall interscholastic athletic activities. It’s a complicated issue.”

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By Terry Toohey

Harrigan announced his resignation as the Lions’ boys basketball coach Sunday. Harrigan is the second basketball coach at O’Hara and third boys basketball coach from a Catholic League school in Delaware County to step down this spring.

Longtime O’Hara girls coach Linus McGinty announced his retirement last week. McGinty won 824 games in a 36-year career at O’Hara and Archbishop Carroll. He achieved 557 of those wins in 24 years at O’Hara. In that span he guided the Lions to the Catholic League final 16 times and won 11 championships.

Last month, Jack Concannon announced he was leaving Monsignor Bonner & Archbishop Prendergast after four seasons as the boys basketball coach. It was Concannon’s second stint at his alma mater. He was the head coach from 1992-96.

A day later, Paul Romanczuk stepped down after 15 seasons as the boys coach at Archbishop Carroll.

Harrigan went 16-29 overall and 5-21 in league play in two seasons at O’Hara. The Lions went 11-12 overall and 5-8 in the league in 2017-18.

Prior to O’Hara, Harrigan coached at now closed Del Val Charter for five seasons. He led the Warriors to the Public League and PIAA District 12 Class 3A titles in 2016.

 

By Matthew DeGeorge

As an athletic director, B.J. Hogan is used to the comings and goings of coaches. Not many of them, however, were once his 11th-grade math teacher. And none that he’s likely to encounter again will have the reputation and pedigree of Linus McGinty.

“It’s amazing,” Hogan said Tuesday. “You sit there and you look, I don’t know how many coaches nowadays could last at a school 25 years and be that successful. … It’s insane how successful he’s been.”

McGinty announced his retirement as the head girls basketball coach at Cardinal O’Hara Tuesday after 24 years at the school and over 800 career wins between O’Hara and Archbishop Carroll over the last four decades.

In the two dozen years at O’Hara, McGinty went 557-113, per the school, making the Catholic League final on 16 occasions and winning 11 titles, including the last two. He won 267 games in 12 seasons with Carroll, giving him 824 career wins.

At O’Hara, he mentored 14 Daily Times Players of the Year, three McDonald’s All-Americans and more than 60 players who went on to play basketball in college, more than 40 at the Division I level.

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By Rick O’Brien

The Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League recently sent an online survey to its member schools to find out their opinion regarding the current PIAA playoff format.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette listed the six questions in the survey. The No. 1 – and most pressing – question: Do you believe schools without geographical boundaries have a competitive advantage over schools with established geographical boundaries?

According to the Post-Gazette, 86 percent of the 108 schools (there are 138 WPIAL schools) that responded to the survey “said they would favor separate tournaments for boundary and non-boundary schools.”

By Matthew DeGeorge

The core of Delco’s hoops prowess this season resided in Class 5A, and media voters across the state reflected that in the release of the All-State basketball teams Tuesday.

Bonner & Prendergast’s Isaiah Wong was voted to the first team in Class 5A, one of seven Delco honorees, all in Class 5A.

Four of the seven second-team nods were doled out to Delco players: Bonner’s Ajiri Johnson, AJ Hoggard of Archbishop Carroll, Christian Ray of Haverford School and Penncrest’s Tyler Norwood. Antwuan Butler of Cardinal O’Hara and Tariq Ingraham of Bonner were third-teamers.

Players were chosen by media across the state according to PIAA classification/enrollment size, with three teams of honorees in each of the PIAA’s six classes. A player of the year and coach of the year were also recognized in each class.

Wong, the 2017-18 Daily Times Boys Basketball Player of the Year, averaged 22.2 points per game in his first season with the Friars after transferring from Notre Dame (N.J.). The 6-3 junior guard led Bonner & Prendie to its first PIAA tournament, advancing to the Class 5A semifinals before being knocked off by champion Abington Heights in overtime. (The Comets were represented by first-teamers Jackson Danzig and George Tinsley as well as coach of the year Ken Bianchi.)

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