Penn Charter lets one slip to Malvern Prep

Posted 2/3/16

PC's Harrison Williams pulls up over a Malvern Prep defender. Williams scored 15, leading the Quakers in their tough loss to the Friars. by Jonathan Vander Lugt This one's going to sting. Three weeks …

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Penn Charter lets one slip to Malvern Prep

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PC's Harrison Williams pulls up over a Malvern Prep defender. Williams scored 15, leading the Quakers in their tough loss to the Friars. PC's Harrison Williams pulls up over a Malvern Prep defender. Williams scored 15, leading the Quakers in their tough loss to the Friars.

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

This one's going to sting.

Three weeks ago, Penn Charter went down to Malvern Prep and got schooled, 70-50. The Quakers had been riding high off of their conference-season-opening win over Episcopal Academy, and the hot-shooting Friars brought them back down to Earth.

The second time around, at a crossroads in the league standings—PC was 2-3, meaning that another loss would likely put its already-slim chance at an Inter-Ac crown in the trash—the Quakers matched up against MP as a completely different team.

After falling behind 10-2 early and going into the second quarter down 20-12, Penn Charter battled all the way back, eventually taking a 59-58 lead on Dylan Burnett's and-one with just over a minute to go.

“We're young,” said senior Harrison Williams though he, by high school basketball standards, is not. Along with three other Quakers, Williams was honored before the game's start as a part of PC's senior night.

He went on, “We have a lot of guys that haven't been in that situation.”

“This is one of the first games I remember that we've been a tight game like that,” he said.

It showed, and not in a good way. With a chance to even up its mark in the conference just 70 seconds away, Penn Charter melted down and let Malvern Prep walk away with a 65-61 victory Friday night.

Burnett's conversion from the line came at the 3:14 mark in the third, and the Quakers were rolling with momentum. They had kept pace with Malvern Prep during the first half, and took away their biggest strength—the three-ball—in the game's last two quarters. MP drilled eight threes in the first two frames, but were held to just one more bucket from behind the arc in the game's remainder.

All the while, Penn Charter leaned heavily on Williams for buoyance. The senior notched 10 in the second half through the time that PC took its lead, but shortly thereafter, committed a foul on the other end.

He had been leading PC with 15 points, but the foul was his fifth, meaning his night was done.

“That didn't help,” said Quaker coach Jim Phillips. “He is probably the most experienced basketball player on our team.”

Without its rock to handle the rock, Penn Charter didn't score again, save for an Adam Holland layup that Malvern Prep let him net in order to wind time off of the clock. The Friars' seven subsequent points came mostly from the free-throw line after Will Powers converted a three-point play from the stripe to put them up with 42.1 left.

“We learned about situational play, some matchups, and being in that kind of situation,” Phillips said. “When you don't have a ton of guys that play just basketball, these decisions get a little bit harder.”

Mason Williams scored 14 for Penn Charter, and Burnett, normally considered the team's defensive stopper, chipped in with 11 points and grabbed nine off the glass. His go-ahead bucket was served up by a beautiful mid-air pass from Adam Holland, who scored eight. Michael Hnatkowski also tallied in double-figures and finished with 10.

“We'll be better for it tomorrow, and a week from now,” Phillips said. The Quakers sized up against Cristo Rey the following day (a 60-45 win), and took on Germantown Academy in its next conference tilt on Tuesday. “As we continue to grow and get more guys with the ball in their hands, we'll grow into some better habits.”

Penn Charter was able to come away with a number of moral victories in this one, but those eventually wear thin.

“There was no quit in them,” Phillips said. “They kept fighting, and that's encouraging.”

“But it gets hard to go back into the locker room afterwards and keep telling them they worked their off, and that they just came out of it on the short side,” Phillips said.

In time, the Quakers have to start turning those efforts into wins. Playing hard is obviously the right start, but it can only offer so much solace without a W in the standings.

“I think we'll be more on the favorable side of these games,” Phillips went on, “rather than this one.”

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