Archbishop Carroll gets a second chance against Berks Catholic

The postseason is often referred to as the second season.

For Archbishop Carroll it literally is.

The Patriots thought their basketball season was over Feb. 16 when they lost to Devon Prep in the Catholic League playoffs. They stopped practicing. Some of their players started preparing for baseball. Others began to work out with their AAU teams. Some began offseason weight training.

Fran Bowe, Archbishop Carroll’s head coach, took a week off and went to the Jersey Shore.

Tuesday night, nearly three weeks after daily basketball practices ended, Bowe and the Patriots will be at Wolf Gymnasium playing Berks Catholic in the opening round of the PIAA Class 4A Tournament.

“My athletic director called me (Friday) and said: ‘We’re in: Do you think you can get the boys ready?’ ” Bowe said.

When Martin Luther King dropped out of the playoffs a spot opened up and Archbishop Carroll ended up as the No. 5 seed out of District 12. Bowe was as surprised as anyone.

Figuring out which teams will emerge from Philadelphia’s Catholic and Public leagues and where they’ll be seeded for the state tournament is a mystery each year at this time, even for the coaches and people who follow basketball closely in the city. District 12 does not conduct qualifying tournaments like districts around the state.

“How (we got in), why, who’s not in . . . all I know is we’re the fifth seed and we’re gonna give our best against a really good Berks Catholic team,” said Bowe. “Just tell me where I’ve gotta go, who we’re playing, and I’ll give it my best shot.”

The Patriots are a tough draw for the District 3 champion Saints (23-4). Their record is a modest 12-10 but all you’ve got to do is take a look at their schedule and you’ll realize this is not first-round fodder.

The Catholic League has always been regarded as one of the best, if not the best, leagues in the state and this year is no different. Carroll took losses to Roman Catholic and West Catholic, which finished tied for first, Archbishop Wood, and Neumann Goretti, which won the league tournament. It lost three times to Devon Prep, which beat Reading High. It finished 5-8 in league play.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that the Pats went 7-1 in non-league play, with wins over Norristown, which reached the District 1 Class 6A championship game; Executive Education, the District 11 Class 3A champ; and Chester, the District 1 Class 5A champ.

“There’s no weaknesses (on this team),” Berks Catholic coach Snip Esterly said of Carroll. ‘They’re probably playing in one of the best leagues in Pennsylvania. (Playing in the Catholic League is) like playing Reading High every night.”

The Patriots are led by 6-3 sophomore Moses Hipps, a second-team all-league pick who averages better than 17 points per game and has scholarship offers from Temple, LaSalle and Fordham. He was a second-team All-State pick last year.

“He’s the real deal,” said Esterly, who compares Hipps favorably to Reading High’s Ruben Rodriguez, the Berks Player of the Year. “My God, I thought Jack Miller could shoot from distance. That dude can shoot.”

Junior Dean Coleman-Newsome, a 6-3 junior, is Carroll’s No. 2 scorer. Senior guard Shawnn Smith transferred in from Bishop McDevitt, which closed following last year. Freshman point guard Jake West has an offer from St. Francis (N.Y.), though Bowe said his status for Tuesday’s game is uncertain due to a late-season injury.

The Saints are back in the state tournament for the first time since 2019 when they lost to Imhotep Charter 53-31 in the opening round. None of the current players saw time in that game.

Berks Catholic’s last PIAA Tournament win came in 2018 when a team led by Casey Jack, Luis Garcia and Tre Dabney entered as District 3 champ and beat Bartram and Valley View before losing to Bethlehem Catholic.

Last year the Saints experienced their first losing season, finishing 6-11. The entire starting lineup returned for this season.

“This is a solid team,” Bowe said of Berks Catholic. “They shoot the ball well. The point guard, Jay-Jay (Jordan), is fantastic; he gets in the lane, does things. They’re just a really good basketball team. They don’t make mistakes, they capitalize on yours and they can shoot it — that’s the great equalizer in basketball.”

The programs have met just once before, in a Class AAA opener in 2013 at Garden Spot. Archbishop Carroll won 47-42, knocking out a Berks Catholic team led by Nana Foulland and coming off a district championship. Carroll advanced to the state title game where it lost to Imhotep Charter.

While Berks Catholic was battling Reading High for the Berks Conference championship and beating Elco, Littlestown and Middletown in the District 3 Tournament the Patriots were idle. They’ll only have had a few practices before Tuesday’s game.

Bowe isn’t sure how that’ll go.

“The two weeks off, maybe it was good for us, who knows?” he said. “This could change my whole philosophy on coaching. If I knew we were in, I’m sure I would’ve been in the gym every day. Does it hurt? Does it help? I don’t know. If we come out and lay a goose egg, maybe it did hurt. Maybe we’ll have fresh legs. There’s always that hope.”