Photos/Videos: Zamani Feelings, Kathy Leister, John Knebels & Rich Flanagan
By: Rich Flanagan
PHILADELPHIA – Ja’Quan Newton accomplished what few (if any) Philadelphia Catholic League players have: four league championships in four years. In his career, the former Miami (Fla.) standout won 12 out of a possible 13 championships when combining District 12 and PIAA state titles and finished his career as the all-time leading scorer in Philadelphia Catholic League history (1,972 points). Newton is currently in training camp with the Albany Patroons, which open their season on Friday, in The Basketball League (TBL).
When taking into account the personal accolades and championship victories, the moments at the Palestra resonate with him most vividly, especially his last league title in 2014.
“We beat Roman my senior year when they had actually beaten us during the regular season, just like this year’s team,” Newtown said. “We lost to them then beat them in the championship and that’s something I will never forget.”
Neumann-Goretti vs. Roman Catholic - PCL Semifinal Highlights by Rich Flanagan
Neumann-Goretti sophomore Robert Wright III (#2) led the Saints with 20 points in the PCL semifinal - PSD Photo by Kathy Leister
Neumann-Goretti will meet Archbishop Ryan in the Philadelphia Catholic League title game at the Cathedral of College Basketball. It will be the league’s first championship game on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in two years and the last time the Saints played there, they took home the fabled plaque. As Newton stated, the Saints fell to Roman Catholic earlier this season but avenged that loss with a 62-60 win in the semifinals.
Sophomore guard Robert Wright III has been sensational this season and continued his strong campaign by scoring 20 points against the top-seeded Cahillites to give Neumann-Goretti (16-4) its 17th title game appearance since 2000. Wright is avg. 18.2 points per game and has scored in double figures in 19 games this season. Fellow sophomore guard Khaafiq Myers (8.9 ppg) had his best game of the season with 16 points and the backcourt duo closed things out on the biggest stage. Wright and Myers accounted for 23 of the Saints’ 37 points in the second half.
Newton hit the game-winning free throws to beat St. Joseph’s Prep in overtime in the 2012 title game and cemented his name as one of the greatest players in league history by claiming four titles.
He came in with a plan on how to get to the Palestra, how to succeed under the tutelage of head coach Carl Arrigale and how to raise his performance when the lights shine brightest.
“Going to a program like Neumann-Goretti, playing in the Palestra and winning a championship is always the goal,” Newton said. “We aim for that goal every time we step on the practice floor from the first day.”
Tony Chennault led Neumann-Goretti to a 32-0 league record with two league titles from 2009-10. The Saints defeated the Cahillites by 33 points then Archbishop Carroll by 16. Chennault was part of Neumann-Goretti's first state championship in 2010 and finished his career with 1,621 points, fourth-most in school history. He now lives in Los Angeles working in the film industry where he owns a company called Mike Jay Films, which works on narrative content, and has worked with the Malloy Brothers, two sibling directors who have created commercials for Nike, Under Armour and NBA 2k, on different projects. He just recently finished shooting a commercial for the NBA Playoffs with Anthony Anderson and Issa Rae, and he will be directing a feature film, “Oldhead'' in Philadelphia starting in May.
Chennault made a trip to the Palestra in three out of four seasons and in order to get there, he notes that you have to have been through close games and hard-fought matchups along the way.
“Number one you have to be battle-tested,” Chennault said. “The Palestra is the biggest stage in Philadelphia high school basketball. If you’re not battle-tested and not ready for that moment, you’re not going to be the best version of yourself. That comes from doing the work every day and embracing every step in the process.”
Spearheaded by Wright, Myers, senior guard Masud Stewart, who was a member of the 2020 title team and is avg. 11.6 ppg this season, and 6-foot-8 junior big man Sultan Adewale (12.2 ppg), this Saints team has been through more than their fair share of battles over the last two seasons.
Neumann-Goretti vs. Roman Catholic - PSD Semifinal Gallery by Kathy Leister
Last year behind Hysier Miller (Temple) and Zaakir Williamson (Buffalo), Neumann-Goretti appeared primed to advance to the league semifinals but, upon review by the PIAA in accordance with new transfer rules, wins were vacated and the season was over. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown city schools, like those in Philadelphia, into a tailspin with restrictions being some of the tightest in the nation. Earlier this season, COVID-19 contact tracing shut the program down for 19 days and the Saints ended off the season playing 13 league games in 20 days.
Still, as Arrigale’s teams have done for years with players like Newton and Chennault, they don’t make excuses and they focus on the task at hand. The Saints rattled off nine wins in that span then took down La Salle and Roman Catholic on their way to Monday’s title game. In that span, they defeated the Raiders, 52-49 on Feb. 11 with Adewale accounting for 22 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks while Wright poured in 18 points and Myers tallied seven boards, five assists and seven steals.
Wright is the latest example of a lead Neumann-Goretti guard, one who plays a similar style to former Kentucky and Washington guard Quade Green, now playing with the Grand Rapids Gold, the NBA G-League affiliate of the Denver Nuggets, alongside Trevon Duval, Kenneth Faried and Isaiah Thomas. Green won a Philadelphia Catholic League title as a freshman then ran into impressive Roman Catholic teams in consecutive seasons and a Collin Gillespie-led Archbishop Wood team in 2017. Green did win four state titles and scored 1,853 career points, just behind Newton on the Saints all-time list.
He remembers what it means to play in this title game against some of the best players Philadelphia has to offer in front of the biggest crowd those players have seen to that point in their careers.
SENIOR GUARD QUADE GREEN HAD 18 POINTS AND 7 ASSISTS IN THE SAINTS' 67-56 2017 PCL SEMIFINAL WIN VS. ROMAN - PSD Photo by Zamani Feelings
“The whole city comes out to watch a basketball game,” Green said. “The top guys in the city are always in it and for guys like me, Tony Carr, Lamar Stevens, and others, it’s always been like that. It was like that before we got to high school. It’s just a blessing to be a part of history.”
Neumann-Goretti, then St. John Neumann, defeated Archbishop Ryan in the 2002 game. That was Arrigale’s second league title, and a victory Monday would be his 12th, increasing his all-time record for a head coach. For the Raiders, it will mark their fourth appearance in the final in program history with a win being the first ever. After making five semifinal appearances in seven seasons, Archbishop Ryan (17-6) finally got over the hump as 6-9 sophomore forward Thomas Sorber had 17 points and six rebounds, Michael Paris scored 13 points off the bench and senior Jalen Snead, a starter on last year’s team that advanced to the PIAA Class 5A title game and played at the Palestra as a sophomore against the Saints, tallied 10 points, eight rebounds, six assists, two steals and two blocks in the 59-55 win over West Catholic on Wednesday.
Archbishop Ryan is making its first Philadelphia Catholic League title game appearance since 2008. That team was led by Northern Division MVP Andrew Rogers, who just completed his first season as the head coach at Council Rock South. Rogers avg. 13.9 ppg that season and scored 22 points, including all 12 of the Raiders’ points in the fourth quarter, in the semifinals against Bonner-Prendergast under his brother, head coach Bernie Rogers, now at the Haverford School. Rogers showed up in the biggest moment by converting two free throws with 0.8 seconds left to lift Archbishop Ryan to the title game.
Archbishop Ryan vs. West Catholic PCL Semifinal Highlights by Rich Flanagan, Kathy Leister & john Knebels:
Fourteen years after leading his alma mater to the title game, Rogers is still as engaged with the program as he was when he was playing, especially when considering head coach Joe Zeglinski is a former teammate and foe.
“I can speak for all of the alums, especially guys who played, that we’re super excited and for me I played against Joe in college,” Rogers said. “I’ve known him a long time and his experience speaks for itself. They are there every year and they’ve been close, so it was great to see them break through because it’s a lot harder than people realize.”
Rogers played four years at the University of Maine and had plenty of matchups against Zeglinski and the University of Hartford in the America East Conference. Zeglinski scored 2,016 career points and hit 393 three-pointers, which stands as 24th all-time in NCAA history. Zeglinski and Rogers were teammates on the 2006 team that reached the semifinals at La Salle University, and after Rogers’ team fell in 2008, the Raiders went through a layoff before another appearance came calling.
Izaiah Brockington took the Raiders to two semifinal appearances running into Green and Gillespie in consecutive seasons. The Archbishop Ryan all-time leading scorer with 1,292 points is currently playing at Iowa State but he learned under both Bernie and Zeglinski, who took over in 2015. Brockington, Matiss Kulackovskis (Bowling Green), Austin Chabot, Austin Slawter, Fred Taylor and others allowed the Raiders to rise in the standings and continued a tradition that Bernie, Zeglinski’s coach, started.
Brockington was one of the first players to understand what Zeglinski wanted for the program and how to raise expectations on the fly.
“When Joe came in, he made getting to the Palestra a goal of ours,” Brockington said. “We followed his lead, put in the work and now it’s crazy because it’s not some far-fetched dream; it’s an expectation. It goes to show how far we’ve come and how much we’ve developed as a program over the years.”
Brockington finished with 31 points in 2017 PCL semifinal loss to eventual PCL Champion Archbishop Wood - PSD Photo by Zamani Feelings
IZAIAH BROCKINGTON OPENS THE SECOND HALF WITH THE STEAL THEN THE BUCKET AND THE FOUL in 2017 PCL Semifinals
Sorber, a transfer from Trenton Catholic, has changed things at both ends for the Raiders with his polished post moves, shot-altering defensive prowess and the ability to draw double teams. That has freed up Snead, Paris, senior Luke Boyd (15.0 ppg), who has 57 three-pointers this season, and 6-4 sophomore guard Darren Williams (12.6), who has a similar game to Brockington’s. Sorber had 21 points and 12 rebounds while Williams added 20 points in the quarterfinal win over Archbishop Wood.
Similar to how Neumann-Goretti players have passed down perspective and experience from their playing days to the new corps, Rogers, Brockington and other alumni have done the same with the current crop of Raiders. Brockington was courtside when Archbishop Ryan downed Central Dauphin in a Play-by-Play Classic at the 76ers Fieldhouse (Del.) on Dec. 23 and he has kept in close contact with Zeglinski, who secured his 100th career win that day, and players like Sorber and Boyd.
Archbishop Ryan Sophomore Thomas Sorber (#35) had 17 points and six rebounds against West Catholic in PCL semifinal - PSD Photo by Kathy Leister
He knows what a win on Monday would mean not only to the program but to the entire school.
“We’ve been longing for a PCL title for so long,” Brockington said. “That was one of the goals that I had set for myself when I was there and not being able to bring us one really crushed me. To see this team continuing to be so close and continuing to chase that first championship, I’m proud of them and I really want to see them make history. I’ll feel like I made history.”
Like Brockington, Newton knows what a coach like Arrigale can do for a program and the future of his players. He feels another title would only enhance Arrigale’s legacy but this team would also achieve something that has been building for several years.
“For the program, adding to Coach Carl’s legacy would be something because he’s one of the best to ever coach within Philadelphia,” Newton said. “The players have been through COVID-19, rescheduling games and guys have not been able to practice. This title would add to what they’ve accomplished during the season because I imagine that some of the games they lost were due to chemistry with guys being out.”
On one side, there’s a team in Archbishop Ryan that has turned several years of disheartening losses into a title game run with the hope of its first crown, and on the other there’s a Neumann-Goretti program under Arrigale that has made trips to the Palestra a regularity and is hoping to add to its Philadelphia Catholic League title collection.