GA's Evan-Eric Longino cuts through to the hoop in hopes of getting to the foul line. He knocked down 16 of 18 from the stripe to help seal GA's win.

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

“A win's a win. We'll take it.”

Those are clichéd statements, sure, but it doesn't mean that Germantown Academy is going to do anything else after their Saturday-night jaunt with Parkway Center City. The Bulldogs came all the way up from Spring Garden and gave GA quite a fight, leading by as much as eight and as late as the third quarter before the Pats pulled away in their 60-48 win.

“They're a good team,” said GA coach Jim Fenerty. “They've gotten better and better as the season has gone along.”

“We knew they were big,” Fenerty said. “And I feel like whenever you deal with senior night, you never quite know what the emotions are going to be like.”

Emotions probably did play a role. Before the game, the Patriots took time to recognize each of the team's six seniors and to honor a seventh, Bobby Taggart, who had been involved with the basketball program since middle school and passed away from cancer in the fall.

The players wanted to honor him with a jersey patch, each member of the team, coaches included, were donned with a “BT” on their chest.

“He would have been our seventh senior, and I think the kids went out and tried a little too hard,” Fenerty said. “Sometimes when you do that, you don't always get the execution you want.”

The Pats led early, getting out to a narrow 12-11 advantage by the end of the first quarter, mostly powered by Devon Goodman's seven in the frame. They struggled in the next one though, and went into the half down 28-20.

“We've been coming out slow lately,” Goodman said. “And that's what happened today. We didn't have a lot of energy and they stuck with us for a while.”

“I think we kind of underestimated them a little bit in the beginning,” chipped in Evan-Eric Longino. “They were a lot bigger than I assumed.”

That wound up being a big deal. PCC has five players that are 6-foot-5-inches or taller: The 6-7 Maqi Watson, 6-6 Kareem Robinson, 6-9 William McNair, and the 6-5 and 6-6 Tyrell and Tyron Davis, respectively. Two more kids—Amir Hill and Vafally Kamara—stand at 6-foot-4. The size was giving GA fits on both ends.

The Pats have one player approaching that height: the 6-foot-8 Joe Stinson. Stinson hasn't seen a lot of playing time lately, because the Inter-Ac, generally short on size, emphasizes fast pace and shooting, two things that Stinson doesn't necessarily have in spades.

That doesn't mean he's a bad player—he's going to NYU to play ball—it just means he's an awkward fit in the Inter-Ac. That said, he came in a whole lot of handy Saturday.

He didn't finish with any points, but made a big impact on the game defensively.

“I felt like he changed the whole face of the game,” Fenerty said. “He didn't score a point, but he had seven blocks, by our stats.”

“He just totally changed it,” Fenerty went on. “He was looking out there and said, 'coach, they've got someone I can cover. He was happy to see a couple of 6-foot-9 guys running around in a different uniform, and I thought he did a great job.”

The tenor of the game had changed by the middle of the third quarter. GA's normal bread and butter, shooting, wasn't working too well, so the Pats had to adjust.

“When that happens,” Fenerty said, “we need to get to the foul line, and we did that a ton.”

Goodman scored 14 in the half—three from the stripe—and Longino netted a whopping 16 of 18 from the free throw line. As a team, the Patriots shot 20 of 24 from the line.

That's what ended up putting the game away. The Bulldogs got into the penalty late in the third, and Longino kept driving into the lane, getting fouled, and sinking his shots to lead GA to a win. He finished with 18 on the night, having made only one basket from the field. Goodman finished with 23, and Gabe Alter had a nice night as well, chipping in with 11.

The Pats have just three conference games left: Tuesday against Penn Charter (the Army-Navy game of the Inter-Ac), Friday against Episcopal Academy, and the following Tuesday against Malvern Prep. The conference has no playoff, so you're stuck wherever you finish in the standings. Should GA sweep, it would be its fourth consecutive conference title.

“Those are three really tough games,” Fenerty said. “GA-Penn Charter is always a big rivalry.”

The Quakers are 2-4 in the conference, but that record belies their true talent level. “We can't look past that,” Fenerty said.

“The kids are tired, and the coaches are tired,” Fenerty said. “But we're old—I think they'll respond better than we do.”