(Credit: Ty Bryson)
A feature from the North Penn High School student newspaper, "The Knight Crier"
The Navy Gym looked a little bit like a track meet as Neshaminy led wire-to-wire; North Penn cut the deficit to 7 late but was unable to overtake the Skins.
North Penn (0-1, 0-1) lost their home and season opener to Neshaminy (1-0, 1-0), 90-80, on Tuesday night.
The game’s pace was set right from the tip-off, and that pace was fast. Both teams would go on to score most of their points in transition, but it was Neshaminy who jumped out to an early 15-6 lead in the first quarter.
The Knights called a timeout with just under three minutes left in the quarter to stop a persistent Neshaminy offense, but were unable to halt them, as Cadenn Amati’s dunk was sandwiched between two Logan Gale layups to extend the Skins lead to 23-10 at the first quarter’s buzzer.
North Penn began to find their stride in the second quarter, with two Luke Hall steals converting into baskets and starting a 9-2 Knights run. The two teams were consistent throughout the quarter, with North Penn outscoring Neshaminy 25-22, led by junior Shane Ward’s 10 points.
“We call Shane ‘the Energizer.’ He never runs out of energy, he is always go, go, go, and he just finds ways to make plays. It showed, especially later on in that second half. We are expecting big things out of him this year,” head coach Cordell Lord said. “I think he does a lot of good things for the guys, and we’re continuing to just gel and get better at playing at that pace consistently and not slowing down.
Coming out of the half with the score 47-35 in favor of the Neshaminy, the Skins took the momentum right back, save for a Nolan Foust lay and deep three. The red and blue went on a 11-0 run late in the third quarter and began to pull away, but it was the aforementioned Ward who went on a 8-0 run by himself to keep the Knights remotely close to striking distance, down 70-51 headed into the fourth quarter.
“There weren’t too many adjustments [during halftime]. It was just continuing to keep going and find a way to get a couple of stops and a rally off,” Lord said.
It was another 9-2 run, once again spearheaded by Hall, that seemed to give the Knights some hope before a Neshaminy timeout was called. After both teams exchanged two 3-pointers apiece, a Skins backcourt violation had all the momentum in the Knights hands, although they were down 14 at the time.
Two more JC Wood 3-pointers and a Nolan Foust corner 3 followed by a Brycen Foust steal and fast break layup brought the Knights as close as they would get, 84-77, before back to back Skins timeouts, following the North Penn defensive pressure, would bring them to a halt.
North Penn would watch Neshaminy nail four of six their free throws within the last minute to pull away to a 90-80 final in Towamencin.
“We want to play super fast. We are a super small, but super fast team and that’s where we want to try to hang our hat on,” Lord said. “Started to hit some shots late, but we didn’t shoot too well throughout the game. For us to not shoot too well and put up 80 points as a decent sign. We’ve just got to finish the plays.”
North Penn fought a good fight against a much taller Neshaminy team, a difficulty that may prove to be one the team will deal with throughout the season with a roster on the smaller side.
“Doing the dirty work early, making sure that guys find [Amati] early, and JC [Wood] did a great job of that,” Lord said. “We found him early and really did a good job boxing him out, but they have some guys that can make some plays and they had multiple offensive rebounds and they made us pay for them.”
Knights senior Chris Kingkiner, who transferred from Archbishop John Carroll High School for this year, notched his first points in navy and columbia today and should be a big part of the team this year.
“Chris did a lot of good things for us tonight. I think he’s still trying to get comfortable with everybody and find his footing, but our message to him every day is you just go. He had an angle injury early so he didn’t get the play in either the scrimmages, so [today] was his first day out. The message for him is just to keep going, keep finding his footing, stay aggressive and make plays because when he does that, we make some really good things happen,” Lord said. “Between him, Shane [Ward] and Nolan [Foust], they are three guys that we think can make waves for us on a consistent basis.”
Earlier this year, Coach Lord underwent open heart surgery, but has made a full recovery and was able to make it back to the court in time for the opener.
“I was a little nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to be back on time, and it was a little bit of a challenge for myself to find my way back and I got back just in time. It feels good to be back on the sideline, be around the guys every day and just be back in my element,” Lord shared. “I’m super happy to be back. These guys pushed me a lot too. I made a commitment to them to be here so I’m doing everything possible for them and they were a big part of my ‘why’ along with my family. I’m just super blessed, happy, humble to be able to do this again. In all reality, I wasn’t supposed to be back until the end of December, January and I’ve been back since mid-October.”
“Life just stops, but the biggest thing and the biggest message is you’ve got to take care of you first. You never know what’s going on, so you just have to stay consistent with checking in, making sure your health is always good, because you can find some underlying things like this,” Lord emphasized.
North Penn will play Mastery Charter (North Pickett) on Friday 12/5 in the North Penn Tip Off Tourney, and Neshaminy will play in the Jack Schott Memorial Basketball Tournament starting on 12/5.
Neshaminy (90): Gale 28, Amati 16, Yon 12, Gold 11, Amrhein 10, Levia 9, Laukaitis 2, Mordaleishuili 2
North Penn (80): Ward 17, N. Foust 15, Kingkiner 13, Hall 11, Wood 10, Vagie 6, B. Foust 4, Thomas 2, Vera 2
