Defending champion, Malvern Prep (6-2) began its first season without Deuce Turner (Bucknell) and the heralded 2020 class. Turner scored an Inter-Ac record 2,452 points in leading the Friars to the 2020 league title as well as the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) title game. 

Returning starters from that team including Rahdir Hicks and Fran Oschell. Hicks, the 6-foot senior point guard and Towson commit, avg. 15.8 points per game, which included a season-high 24 points against the Haverford School on Feb. 24. He ended his career with 1,190 points, sixth-most in school history. More importantly, head coach John Harmatuk called Hicks, “the best defensive player I’ve ever coached.” Oschell, 6-8 senior forward and Duke baseball commit, avg. 14.1 ppg in his final season and ended his career with 850 points.

Both players were instrumental to the program’s success over the last four seasons and Harmatuk was so impressed with their leadership during a wild offseason.

“We tied for the best record in the league, but I thought it went well,” Harmatuk said. “Fran was a four-year starter and Rahdir was a five-year starter. Brock Dudek played a little last year, but other than Fran and Rahdir, no one had played all that much on the floor in a varsity basketball game. The kids really grew a bunch.”

“He’s really coachable and that always makes things easier,” Rogers said. “He’s willing to do so much like defend and make other guys better on top of his scoring. He brings so much to a team. That type of ability helps your team, but that willingness to play anywhere on the floor becomes contagious with his teammates.”

A year after avg. 17.7 ppg, 6-3 senior guard Christian Clover’s scoring dropped off a little bit at 10.7 ppg but his presence was felt in several games. He erupted for 30 points, including drilling seven three-pointers against Springside Chestnut Hill, then scored 19 points in his final high school game versus the Churchmen. Clover is hoping to play at a prep school next season to improve his recruitment. The Fords also boasted senior guards Bernie Rogers (Lycoming College), the coach’s son, and Zach Genther (Washington College). Rogers scored 14 points in the season opener against the Friars while Genther (9.3 ppg) added a 19-point game in the second matchup with Malvern Prep.

For second-year head coach Matt Dolan, having had the opportunity to coach Longino for two seasons gave him a great sense of the type of player and person that he is as well as everything he has meant to the program.

“Jordan has been at GA since he was in Pre-K,” Dolan said. “The phrase that he has used when talking about his team here is to ‘leave a legacy.’ He’s done that. Everyone will look at the all-time scoring record and he earned and deserved it. When we talk about legacy, going in before school and working out twice a week at 6 a.m. or being our hardest worker, that’s how you leave it. We can reflect and bring that up to our rising sophomores and freshman. Our best player was willing to work hard every day.”

Owens, who played at Franklin Learning Center then Abington Friends, where he hit the game winner in the 2003 Friends Schools League title over Mustafa Shakur, who starred at Arizona, and Friends’ Central School, has wanted to push the tempo since he took the job and the implementation of the shot clock allowed him to put his plans into motion;

“In my initial interview, one of the things I wanted to do was to play a lot faster because I could foresee the shot clock coming,” Owens said. “I almost would assume that watching games in AAU that not only would the shot clock come to our league, but it would make the league better. It forces players to make decisions and prepares them for the next level. What I did early with our program was coach as if it was already implemented. We wanted to play fast and score in 24 seconds. It was an easy transition for us.”

Mark Butler, the 5-10 sophomore guard who saw a lot of time as a freshman, avg. 15.0 ppg in Penn Charter’s (2-2) four games. The season was cut short due to contact tracing. He posted 21 points against the Churchmen and played older than he really is, similar to when he was called up to play with 16U Philly Pride that won the Under Armour Association national championship in 2019. That team boasted Hunter Healy (Bishop McDevitt), Marquette commit Stevie Mitchell (Wilson), UPenn commit Ed Holland (Friends Central) and Hicks, who went down with an injury and allowed Butler to join the team.

Delaney elevated his talent and pushed his teammates to continue to improve over the course of the shortened season, and that was evident to Shanahan from the beginning.

“He brought leadership,” Shanahan said. “He was our most experienced leader. We had a very inexperienced team this year and we took our lumps early this season. At the end, Will got physically more mature and he grew up so much that he was able to compete at a much higher level.”

Two Churchmen are moving on to play basketball at the next level: Adam Archambault (Albright College) and Nick Marshall (Washington College). Archambault avg. 4.8 ppg as a senior while Marshall only played in three games due to injury. Freshman Kevin McCarthy, a 6-2 guard, played big minutes and contributed from the get-go. He avg. 11.8 ppg and hit at least four three-pointers in three of his final four games.

Julian McFadden had two seniors to rely on as his team dealt with a shutdown due to contact tracing after the opener: Luke Neverosky (5.3 ppg) and Bobby Markey (5.8), who will be playing football at Dickinson College in the fall. Markey’s best game of his senior campaign was an 11-point outing against Episcopal Academy. Another upperclassmen, 6-foot junior Darius Isaac, led the team with 11.6 ppg.

The Blue Devils (1-5) are robust with young talent, particularly in the form of 6-5 forward Mitch Karp, 6-foot guard Ronald Brown and 5-9 guard Tommy Markey, Bobby’s younger brother. Karp had 12 points against the Fords on Feb. 20. Brown avg. 9.3 ppg in year one, which included a 15-point game versus the Friars to finish out the season. Tommy Markey poured in 12 points in a loss to the Patriots.