BY MIKE LIVINGSTON
(Photos by Riley Schwarz)
RADNOR, PA – ‘Trust The Process.’
It is a moniker that has rung true throughout the Philadelphia area for years now, defining the Philadelphia 76ers for the better half of the past decade – and it’s one that the Archbishop Carroll Patriots have now adopted.
The once ambiguous Carroll added to an impressive 7-1 stretch on Friday night in Radnor with a sellout crowd and Sixers superstar Tyrese Maxey in attendance with a 59-52 victory over the Philadelphia Catholic League’s top standing team coming into the night in Neumann-Goretti, while clinching their spot in the 2026 Philadelphia Catholic League playoffs.
Maxey, who has joined NBA MVP talks this season, is averaging nearly 30 points per game for the Sixers and was on hand to witness the Patriots' first victory over Neumann-Goretti since March 13th, 2009, and the first in the regular season since February 9th, 2001, back when the school was known as St. John Neumann.
“It’s been a roller coaster,” said Patriots head coach Francis Bowe. “You put so much into all of this, every coach in this league does. And you always have these aspirations in October and September, and you get high expectations when you're going to City of Palms and all this. And then you get some phone calls in June or July and hear some kids aren’t coming back, and you just go ‘how can I rally the troops?’ But it has been the seniors, just trusting each other and putting this all together.”
Over the course of this current senior class’s tenure in Radnor, Ian Williams, Nasir Ralls, and Drew Corrao have seen a lot. From the backend of a team led by Dean Coleman-Newsome and Jake West to a team so star-studded it was crowned Catholic League favorites before the year began, and finally to this season’s rendition of the Patriots, a team that was projected to finish at the bottom of the league, lucky if they’d even sniff the Catholic League playoffs. Through it all, that class was able to trust themselves and trust the process around them, even when it seemed hopeless.
“Me, Nas, and Drew, you know, we’re the last ones standing,” said Williams. “It’s just us, and we know it's going to be adversity, right. That’s not even just in basketball, that's in life, so that’s what coaches preach to us. We know we had our adversity, so now it's our time to rise and we are rising to the occasion.
Sixers superstar Tyrese Maxey in the house in Carroll's 59-52 home victory over Neumann-Goretti (Photo by Riley Schwarz for PSD)
That adversity came as something that threatened to tear a once lionized Carroll team to its knees.
With the departures of stars such as Darrell Davis (Boys Latin, MD), Munir Grieg (Coronado, NV), Christian Matos (Sunrise Christian Academy, KS), and Gonzaga commit Luca Foster (Link Academy, MO) it would have been easy for the likes of Williams, Ralls, and Corrao to join them and look for greener pastures even around the corner at other Catholic League schools, but they didn’t.
Even in the face of a senior campaign that their team projected to finish towards the bottom of the Catholic League, the trio decided to stick it out for one last season and trust the process.
“They do it,” said Bowe when asked how he gets his team to buy in. “I’m telling you, it's the same thing, rinse and repeat. We’re going to show up tomorrow morning at practice, and we’re going to do the same thing. It’s going to be what we do, our fundamentals, our basics, what we believe in. We’ve done it all season long, win or lose, but it has been consistent.”
And while the Patriots may have suffered a tough loss to St. Joseph’s Prep early this week on 17th and Girard.
Archbishop Carroll head coach Francis Bowe. (Photo by Riley Schwarz for PSD)
Before that loss, the team was riding a six-game win streak where they handled the likes of Catholic League contenders Father Judge and Bonner-Prendergast while picking up a plethora of other league wins, with a majority of them coming at home.
That run is what eventually got the Patriots where they are now, with a playoff spot secured over a week before the regular season closes out and an entire school community behind them.
“The student section got us amped, man,” said Nikolai Lugendo. “We can’t play in a quiet gym; we already know that from St. Joe’s Prep and Conwell-Egan. The students brought the atmosphere, and we fed off of it.”
Carroll’s road/home splits have told a majority of the story for them so far this season, while the Patriots are 6-1 in the friendly confines, they’re 1-3 on the road, with their lone road victory coming at a struggling Conwell-Egan, where they took home a 66-56 win.
That home-court advantage reared its head yet again for Carroll against the Saints, and with an already raucous crowd getting louder before tip – Maxey joining the fray just seconds before tip-off brought that environment just a notch up, and it showed.
From the opening tip, Carroll’s east gym was rocking, and nobody fed off the environment more than the man who took and won that tip-off in Lugendo.
Archbishop Carroll vs. Neumann-Goretti. (game highlights by Rich Flanaghan for PSD)
After going down the court for the opening basket of game which put Carroll into a lead they would never once surrender – Lugendo brought himself right back on to the defensive end and set up to defend the Saints’ star forward and East Stroudsburg commit Alassan N’Diaye who took the reigns as the Saints No. 1 option when star guard Stephon Ashely-Wright was ruled out just before the game with an undisclosed tear in his thigh.
Lugendo, a transfer from Haverford High School, has been a solid piece in the starting lineup for the Patriots this season, but took his game to another level in one of his squad's biggest games of the year.
He’d help get the Patriots out in front early, closing the first quarter out with a 23-11 lead.
The Carroll pace didn’t slow at all in the second quarter, even as Williams spent time on the bench in foul trouble after picking up three in the first quarter – sixth man Nigel Lambert picked up the slack off the bench with a few big defensive plays and clutch buckets on the offensive end.
However, with just a few minutes to go in the period, Neumann-Goretti head coach Carl Arrigale called a timeout and saw his squad narrow the gap to as little as eight before halftime, where the Patriots eventually landed with a 29-20 advantage.
“I think we just chanted ‘defensive rebounds’ three times in the locker room because that was what we needed to focus on,” said Lugendo. “That’s what is going to win games in the PCL. Because we’re not the best shooting team, and we know that. We have to put in the dirty work and win games that way.”
In the third quarter, while Carroll wasn’t necessarily able to shoot it at the clip they had before, they were able to limit numerous second chance opportunities for Neumann and had a monopoly on the defensive boards that seemed to carry through nearly the entire night. By the end of the third period, even as Neumann had closed the gap to make it just 42-37 Patriots, it still felt as though Carroll was in control of things.
The fourth quarter went on and saw Carroll hold a multiple-possession lead for a majority of it, up until the end when the Saints were able to tighten things up to a one-possession game.
This was until a few big baskets from Lugendo and Yasir Turner helped the Patriots to pull away for good.
“It’s two words, defense and rebounding,” said Bowe. “We’ve been throwing it in their faces since September, and they believe it and buy into it. They do.”
And it seemed to be those two words that carried Carroll through the final few minutes to secure the victory as Ralls pulled down a contested defensive board and jogged out of the paint, where Neumann would let him dribble out the final seconds for the victory.
Archbishop Carroll vs. Neumann-Goretti. (Game video/ Riley Schwarz for PSD)
Carroll's Nick Lugendo was instrumental in game win vs. Neumann-Goretti. (PSD photo by Zach Reagan)
“It’s been about the simple things for us, defense and rebounding,” said Williams. “People might say that we don’t have talent, but we know we do. When you have a guy like Drew here who is 6’9 and can put the ball on the floor, who can shoot the ball, that got a good IQ. It’s just been about having fun and sticking to the basics and keeping things simple.”
PSD Jr. reporter & PCLSportsnetwork correspondent Harper Litten post game interview with Ian Williams.
PSD Jr. reporter & PCLSPORTSNETWORK Correspondent Harper Litten post game interview with Nasir Ralls.
If keeping it simple is all Carroll needs to do to keep winning, then they’ll have their work cut out for them on Sunday when they’re scheduled to faceoff with Archbishop Wood in Warminster in a real road test. Nonetheless, the Patriots are secured in the PCL playoffs and will now work on their seeding arrangements with a slate of games left in Catholic League play.
As for the Saints, they’ll head back home and get set for another heavyweight matchup in South Philadelphia with Father Judge on Sunday as they continue their push to get back to the hubcap.
