5 Things To Know in Berks II boys basketball for the 2022-23 season
Each day this week MikeDragoSports.com will be taking an in-depth look at Berks basketball, with team-by-team capsules and preview stories ahead of Friday’s season-openers.
1. Oh brother, the Saints are loaded
With three starters, including All-Berks guard Josiah Jordan, returning from last year’s District 3 Class 4A championship team Berks Catholic was already good enough to repeat as champs.
When the McKoy brothers — Joshua, a junior, and Kingston, a freshman — showed up in the gym a few months ago the Saints went from top district and Berks II contenders to the favorite for each crown.
“They just fill in two great spots,” said Saints coach Snip Esterly, who needed to replaced graduated starters Aiden Sands, a forward, and Tyler Givens, a center.
Joshua McKoy, a versatile 6-3 wing, was the second-leading scorer at 15.4 points per game last season on an Antietam team that went 20-6 and reached the District 3 Class 2A title game. He was the only sophomore on the Berks IV all-division team.
“He can shoot the 3, take the ball to basketball, rebound,” Esterly said. “He’s unselfish. The kids adapted (to each other) so well.”
Kingston, at 6-1, shows a lot of promise and could be one of the first guards off the bench.
“The young man can play,” Esterly said. “He can take ball to the basket, he can play defense. He reminds me of Stevie as a freshman.”
That would be Stevie Mitchell, the former Wilson star and one of the greatest guards in Berks history.
As we said, the Saints were pretty good to begin with before winning the transfer lottery. They returned three of the top four scorers from a team that went 23-5.
Jordan is one of the premier players in the league. He can control a game on either side of the court. He was MVP of the West Reading Summer League after helping his team win back-to-back titles.
Senior wing Ryan Koch is on a short list of Berks’ best 3-point shooters. He led the league with 63 last season.
Teammate Jack Miller is also at the top of that list. His teammates don’t call him “Logo” for no reason. He knocked down 44 3’s last year in about 45 attempts . . . OK, a few more than that. The point is when he’s left open you can just about put it in the book.
The Saints have other weapons in Kevin Lawlor and Parker Nein and an undersized but springy-legged post player in Jaxon Geddio, a finalist for Most Improved Player in the West Reading Summer League.
“I always say I can go eight and nine (deep),” said Esterly, who never actually does. “(But) I can. This year it’s true. We’ve got some talent.”
2. Who can answer Eagles’ biggest question?
No team in the league lost the kind of talent Exeter has since last season. All-State pick and 1,000-point scorer Colin Payne graduated. Tight end recruit Joey Schlaffer, the Eagles’ No. 2 scorer the past two seasons, will enroll early at Penn State and miss his senior basketball season.
So, how do the Eagles replace nearly 30 points per game?
“That’s the question,” said Exeter coach Matt Ashcroft.
After Schlaffer was lost for good with an injury late in the regular season the Eagles scored just enough points to squeeze into the PIAA Tournament. They got there with defense, the emerging post play of 6-6 Anthony Caccese and a lot of guts.
All of those elements are back this season, as are six players who started at some point.
Ashcroft knows he won’t have someone who can put up 20 points 10 times, as Payne did, but he’s got several guys who can produce.
“We have to do it by committee,” he said.
Caccese, who came up with 19-point, double-digit rebound efforts in playoff wins over Wilson and Milton Hershey, will head the committee. The University of Delaware-bound tackle will be a match-up probem for most.
“He’s just an absolute house,” said Berks Catholic coach Snip Esterly.
The Eagles will also have a couple guys who can fill it up from the outside: Senior guard Teddy Snyder, who was fifth in the league with 52 3’s and 6-3 junior wing Reece Garvin.
Ashcroft said Garvin has made as big a leap from one season to the next as anyone he’s coached; he’s counting on Garvin to become one of the county’s 3-point leaders.
“He can really fill it up,” Ashcroft said.
Exeter should get strong guard play from Zyion Paschall and Alex Kelsey and scoring punch from Kevin Saenz. It could also get help from 6-3 freshman Aidan Dauble, a strong finisher, and 6-6 Deven Sheerin, a Mount Saint Mary’s baseball recruit who has returned to the court for the first time since junior high.
After struggling to stay above .500 against the most demanding schedule in District 3 last season the Eagles should pile up a few more wins and position themselves for a better playoff seed now that they’re in Berks II.
3. Gingrich will be a marked man
Donovan Gingrich breathed some life into a struggling Conrad Weiser offense last season, providing the kind of 3-point production the Scouts sorely lacked. The freshman knocked down six 3s in a late-January win over playoff-bound Tulpehocken, five each against Muhlenberg and Wilson and four two other times.
He finished with 43 3-pointers in 18 games. Many more are on the way. They just might not come as easily this year, warned Scouts coach Rich Miller.
“Teams are not gonna just let him stand on the wing and shoot,” Miller said. “He’s gonna be guarded. Last year we had a 6-7 guy inside (all-division pick Charlie Dobb), we had a DI football player (Aanjay Feliciano) in there. They took some of the pressure off him. This year he has to pick it up a little bit.”
Gingrich, the Scouts starting quarterback in football, will be drawing plenty of attention. He’ll need to find new ways to score, will have to create his own shot and get to the foul line if the Scouts are to have success.
They’ve lost three of their top four scorers after the graduation of Dobb and Feliciano and with senior Adam Noll deciding to concentrate of football and not play basketball.
“I’m expecting a lot from him,” Miller said of Gringrich, a 5-11 sophomore, “but I’m also realistic enough to know it might take time (for him to adjust).”
The Scouts are painfully young; there could be times they won’t have a senior on the floor. Gingrich and sophomore Brady McKee are the lone return starters.
4. Raiders trying to close the gap
Matt Herbener had a lot of catching up to do after being approved as Twin Valley’s coach in mid-May. He found a formula for success during an active summer and fall schedule.
“We found that when we play defense the way we’re capable of playing it we can hang around with any team that we play,” said the 27-year-old former Manheim Central assistant. “That’s the key for us: Defense. If we can hold teams to 45, 50 points, that gives us a chance.”
The Raiders have three starters back, including all-division pick Kannon Zdimal, their leading scorer. Still, there’s a considerable talent gap between them and the upper tier Berks II teams, Berks Catholic and Exeter, and Berks I crossovers opponents: Reading High, Wilson and Muhlenberg.
At least one-third of the Raiders’ games will come against teams with the capability to reach the PIAA Tournament.
“When we slow down the game and get good possessions, we can frustrate teams,” Herbener said. “It’s gonna be very hard to slow down some teams. Against Reading and Muhlenberg, it’s near-impossible.”
The Raiders suffered a setback early in practice when promising sophomore Kooper Zdimal fractured a bone in his foot. He could miss a month or more.
5. Berks Catholic has a real shot
Snip Esterly made a not-so-bold statement before last season, saying his Berks Catholic team would hit more 3-pointers than ever.
The Saints’ did, their 187 3’s crushing the program record — by 50.
Ryan Koch led the Berks League with 63; he tied the program record by hitting six in a game. Jack Miller hit 44, Aidan Sands 39.
Now Esterly is being even bolder.
“We were a good shooting team last year,” he said. “(Now) we’re better.”
Koch and Miller return as seniors and Josh McKoy, who hit 22 times from beyond the arc as a sophomore at Antietam, joins them. Parker Nein and Kevin Lawlor, 3-point threats off the bench last season, will see more time.
Esterly is urging Miller to pull the trigger more often.
“He can hit from NBA range, and it’s effortless,” Esterly said. “Kids get so frustrated (trying to guard him) at practice because he shoots from the logo.”
Josiah Jordan, who’s on target to become the Saints’ fifth 1,000-point player, can also hit from beyond the arc.
Koch, who signed to play with Pitt/Johnstown in the Pennsylvania Conference, could join him as a 1,000-point scorer. He averaged 14.3 points last season.
Koch needs two 3’s to break the program record of 106, set in two seasons by Tyrone Nesby IV. Koch was five shy of Matt Harley’s single-season program record of 68.