Evan-Eric Longino drives against a Neshaminy player in a six-team rotating scrimmage last Saturday. Longino figures to be the focal point of Germantown Academy's offense in 2016-17. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

As Evan-Eric Longino pulled up and drained a three, the senior looked right at home. Germantown Academy was playing in its first session in a marathon day of scrimmages—also its first crack at a real game environment in the 2016-17 season—against Neshaminy High School.

Later, he took in a pass in the corner, dribbled, and barreled through a defender on his way to a layup full of contact.

Swish.

On the other side of the court, Kyle McCloskey was running around like a man on fire. Quarterback by day on autumn Saturdays, the uber-athletic 6-foot-4-inch senior will play the part of a roving big on winter nights.

In the meantime, fellow senior Cole Storm was darting around the hardwood. Last year, we was a sixth-man sparkplug. This time around, his duties are much the same, save for the fact that he’ll be on the court for a few more minutes per game.

In search of its fourth Inter-Ac title defense, Germantown Academy will have on-court familiarity in the form of the aforementioned twelfth-graders. They’re back for a final go-round, and they’re doing what they’ve done throughout their Patriot careers.

The only problem that coach Jim Fenerty has is that that’s where the familiarity begins and ends—hardly anyone else on the team has significant varsity minutes.

“Last year’s seniors did a nasty thing,” Fenerty said. “They graduated.”

He’d be referring to the three-man core of Devon Goodman (now playing at the University of Pennsylvania), Gabe Alter (Colgate), and Bailey Whitman (Connecticut College), as well as rotational pieces Joe Stinson and Eathyn Edwards.

“It’ll be a transition year,” Fenerty said, “but we’ve got some really great building blocks.

“We’ll be an entirely different team in at least one sense. We’re replacing a jet of a point guard in (Goodman) with (Longino).”

Goodman was about six-feet tall and 160 pounds soaking wet, though it bore no negative impact on the silky-smooth guard’s play. Longino’s bigger and less quick—he probably has at least four inches and 40 pounds on Goodman—but he brings his own strengths and matchup nightmares for opposing teams.

Against Neshaminy, he customarily shot the lights out on his way to nine points in 15 minutes of action. Generally, he’s too big for smaller point guards and too fast for larger forwards.

“He could play four different positions for us,” Fenerty said. He mentioned all but small forward. “It just depends on who we’re playing. He’s got a Division-I body, a Division-I mind, and he flat-out understands how to play.”

It should come as little surprise that he, along with McCloskey, are nearing the 1,000 career points threshold. Longino needs 28 more—a total he should eclipse by the second week of December. After McCloskey scores 173 more points (about 40 percent of last season’s total), he’ll earn a place on the wall of GA’s gym as well.

“The offense is going to happen,” Fenerty said. “We have enough talented kids—even the young guys, they’re talented and can score—but what I’m worried about is being able to stop other teams.

“My strength has always been teaching the defensive end. We need to improve that—we’ll probably change up some things and show some different looks.”

Rounding out GA’s list of expected playmakers is Khalil Ashley-Diarrah, Ben Garcia, Josh Brownstein, Andrew Towne, and Brian Basile.

“We’re young this year,” Longino said, “but we’ve got a lot of talent.”

Ashley-Diarrah and Basile are sophomores, Garcia’s a junior, and Brownstein and Towne are seniors that figure to add solid rotation minutes.

“We’ve been working on knowing our role in the offense,” Longino said. “I’m switching roles, for one. I’ve never really played point guard.”

Moreover, last year’s team was mostly a six-man rotation—the starting five plus Storm—but this year’s team figures to go eight or nine deep.

“A lot of our guys weren’t on varsity last year,” Longino said. “We’ve got to up the defensive intensity and get them adjusted to the place of the game. We’ve got the talent, we’ve just got to mature.”