Fleetwood makes it back to district title game for first time in 33 years

By  Sam Cavalieri — MikeDragoSports.com correspondent

Littlestown’s Christopher Meakin attempted to be a one-man show Monday in a District 3 Class 4A semifinal at Fleetwood. He scored 17 points in the first half, including, incredibly, four three-point plays. 

Fleetwood’s six deep played as one. 

The second-seeded Tigers took the Thunderbolts’ best shot, then stormed away for a 58-37 victory to reach their first district final in 33 years. 

Meakin hit a 3-pointer with 6:22 remaining in the second quarter to give the third-seeded Thunderbolts (19-5) a 19-14 lead. Jake Bosley picked up his third foul five minutes before half and took a seat on the bench. Everything seemed to shift toward the Tigers (22-3) at that point.
Fleetwood coach Terry Sitler said he saw on film that Bosley is the Littlestown catalyst, so the Tigers wanted to take advantage of him being on the bench. They switched up their defense from man-to-man to a 2-3 zone and effectively rebounded out of the zone.

This took most of the interior touches away from the 6-8 Meakin, who scored just four points after Bosley went out. Fleetwood went on a game-altering 12-0 run to take a 26-19 lead it never relinquished.

“(Bosley) got into foul trouble, he went out and we really buckled down in the zone,” said Fleetwood’s Jake Karnish. “That’s when we were able to push the ball, get our points up and go in with the lead.”

Karnish, a two-time All-Berks pick, had 13 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.

Junior center Hunter Svoboda scored a career-high 15 points to lead the Tigers. He also grabbed 10 rebounds.

Karnish gave credit to Svoboda and Kevin Williams for boxing out Meakin to allow Fleetwood to control the glass.

“I can’t take all the credit,” Svoboda said. “Give Nate (Herb), Aiden (Soumas), Jake, Liam (Hilburt) and Kevin credit. They all fed me down low and it worked.”

Nate Herb had a game-high six assists, including a half-ending sequence when he put the defense at ease before he fired a look-away jump pass to a wide-open Svoboda for a layup as time expired. That gave the Tigers a 28-22 lead at halftime. 

The second half was more of the same as the third-seeded Thunderbolts kept bombing 3’s on their way to a 3-for-23 performance from long range. The Tigers continued to move the ball and get good looks.

Aiden Soumas scored seven of his eight points in the second half and Williams and Liam Hilburt combined to go 5-for-8 from 3-point range.

When Williams picked up his fourth foul with 1:15 left in the third quarter sixth man Hilburt stepped right in and promptly buried two 3s to stretch the Tigers’ lead to 42-28.

“I am trying to get guys to score and get guys going,” Herb said. “When we get Kevin going and Liam going, they shot well from deep today, it leads to team success. They shot the lights out from 3, which helped us a lot.”

The Tigers will meet defending champ Berks Catholic, the No. 1 seed, in the championship game Thursday at 12:45 at Giant Center.

“It’s definitely the pinnacle of my coaching career, at this point,” said Sitler. “Hopefully more to come. We are just going to soak in it tonight and then start game-planning for Thursday.”

	1	2	3	4	Final
Littlestown	13	9	6	9	37
Fleetwood	12	16	11	19	58

Thunderbolts (18-5)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Denault	0-2	0-0	0-2	0	1	0
Bosley	3-7	0-0	0-1	2	6	6
Riley	0-5	4-4	0-3	0	4	4
Meakin	8-21	4-4	1-7	0	8	21
Herr	2-11	0-0	2-9	0	3	6
Thomas	0-2	0-0	0-1	1	1	0
Unger	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Clabaugh	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Welty	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Thayer	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	1	0
Bossom	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Smith	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Totals	13-48	8-8	3-23	3	24-26	37

Tigers (22-3)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Soumas	2-8	3-4	1-3	1	6	8
Herb	3-7	1-3	0-2	6	2	7
Svoboda	7-12	1-1	0-2	0	10	15
Williams	3-5	0-1	3-5	0	2	9
Karnish	4-9	4-5	1-3	5	10	13
Hilburt	2-4	0-1	2-3	0	3	6
Ryan	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Senna	0-1	0-0	0-1	0	0	0
Schaffer	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
McKinney	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Totals	21-46	9-15	7-19	12	33-36	58

Turnovers: Littlestown 9, Fleetwood 10.