Germantown Academy's Kyle McCloskey goes for a layup. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

Germantown Academy might be in uncharted territory.

The four-time defending Inter-Ac champs went into Friday’s conference season-opening triple-header at Philadelphia University optimistic about their matchup against the Haverford School. Of late, Evan-Eric Longino was scoring points in buckets, and Kyle McCloskey was off to the best scoring start of his career.

After the Pats’ 49-41 loss to the Fords, that optimism will be tested. Head coach Jim Fenerty couldn’t even remember the last time that GA lost a league opener (it was the 2009-10 season). Longino was held to just seven points (easily his worst total all season), and the Fords readily exposed GA’s need for another option on offense.

“We’ve had situations where we lost the first two games the season, and then come back and won. We had to win out—and that’s what happened,” Fenerty said.

“I felt like Bernie [Rogers, the Fords’ head coach] and his staff did a great job,” said Fenerty. “His kids did what they were supposed to do.”

Maybe “uncharted territory” is a little unfair, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Pats are in a tough spot. Sure, Fenerty didn’t want to take away from the performance on the other bench, where Rogers, in his second year at the helm of the Fords, has done a stellar job rebuilding the Haverford School program—but it’ll be hard to keep deflecting from a team that wilted in the second quarter (a margin of 15-6, to go into the half down 30-18) and saw only one scorer reach double figures.

“In the first half, we didn’t run any of our stuff,” Fenerty said. “We just took jumpers, and that’s been the case in the four losses—we’ve relied on jump shots, not good shots. We have a lot of things that we need to work on. We were exposed today, and we’ve been working on them. Maybe we needed a loss—it’ll bring more clarity to what I’m saying.”

“The Inter-Ac is a 10-round fight,” he said, offering a bit of perspective. “I don’t think anybody’s going to go undefeated.”

In addition to Longino and McCloskey, the team has three other seniors: Cole Storm, Andrew Towne, and Josh Brownstein. All three received minutes Friday (Storm plays the biggest role in the team’s schemes), but scored just nine combined points. Colten Smith and Kahlil Ashley-Diarrah each scored four, while McCloskey’s 18 led the team.

“(Longino) was being double-teamed everywhere he went,” Fenerty said. “Someone else has to step up. Today, I went to a lot of young guys to do some things, and I’ll probably continue to do that.”

It was an attractive and easy formula for teams to follow if they’re trying to beat GA: throw the house at limiting Longino’s effectiveness, let McCloskey get his points and don’t worry about the rest.

Preventing it will be the challenge.

“We have to see what happens,” Fenerty said. “We went younger and with a little more athleticism.”

That’s not to say that the Patriots’ performance was wholly bad—they came back and were down just five points for most of the fourth quarter—but they couldn’t seal the deal.

GA walloped the School of the Future—a public school in Fairmount Park in West Philadelphia—on Saturday 86-46. It’s a good way to get back into the swing of things, because on Tuesday the pressure picks back up when Fenerty and the Pats will head to Springside Chestnut Hill for the second conference game of the season.

“They’ll be playing hard,” Fenerty said, of the Blue Devils. SCH has been in a half-decade Inter-Ac rut, but brand-new head coach Julian McFadden has gotten his team to play with a little more fire each time they go out.

“We’ll get better,” Fenerty went on.

They’ll have to, because their margin of error is a lot shorter from this point forward.

Jonathan Vander Lugt can be reached at vanderlugt.chlocal@gmail.com