Coatesville coach John Allen on Red Knights: ‘They’re champions; they never quit’
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When John Allen, the newly named Coatesville basketball coach, saw Reading High play in a fall tournament before the 2022-23 season he found a blueprint for the kind of program he wanted to build at his alma matter.
He saw the way Ruben Rodriguez, Myles Grey and Amier Burdine got after it on the court . . . the way they threw themselves on the floor for every loose ball . . . they way they picked each other up . . . the way they played out every play as if it was their last.
“That’s how I wanted to play,” Allen thought as he was preparing for his first season on the Coatesville bench. “I wanted to mirror what they do: The discipline, playing hard, being able to compete on any level.”
Two years later Allen’s Coatesville team is preparing for its second straight PIAA Tournament quarterfinal . . . against the Red Knights.
Rodriguez, Grey and others who were so instrumental in carrying Reading to the Class 6A state championship last year are gone but the spirit and style and energy they epitomized remains.
Nick Chapman, Malik Osumanu, Yadiel Cruz – all key pieces on that 31-1 team as juniors – have formed the nucleus of another winning Reading team, using the same brand of passionate basketball to take them back to the Elite Eight for the third time in four seasons.
The Red Knights (21-10) showed that in their 54-47 overtime victory against District 10 champion Erie McDowell Wednesday in Altoona . . . just as they did four days earlier in winning at Chester 65-63 in their PIAA Tournament opener.
They’re a No. 4 seed and with more losses than anyone left in the Class 6A portion of the tournament but none of that matters this late in March. They’re still a dangerous team capable of making it back to Giant Center to defend their championship and Allen knows it.
“They’re three-time state champs in the last seven years,” Allen said. “I don’t take anything that they do lightly. They’re champions. You can’t measure what champions are.”
Coatesville beat Reading 69-51 on Jan. 12 but that seems like another season now.
The Red Knights were 7-6 and still feeling their way along at that point. Plus, they were playing without Nick Chapman, who missed a month at midseason with an orbital fracture.
Allen knows what happened at Ross Kersey Gymnasium two months ago will have little bearing on how things play out at Martz Hall when the ball goes up Saturday at 1.
“They’re a completely different team than they were (then),” he said of Reading. “They look like they’ve been playing together for years. They didn’t look that way in the first game. They went on the road now and beat some really good teams, which doesn’t always happen.”
In addition to not having Chapman, their best perimeter defender and the heartbeat of the team, the Red Knights had severe foul issues in that game. Guards Jeremiah Camara, Daquan Burgess, and Nico Sosa each fouled out. Osumanu, at 6-5 the only real length they have, finished the game with four fouls, as did point guard Weshley Rosario. The Red Raiders (22-8) went to the foul line a staggering 40 times and sank 32.
What stuck out most to Allen that night is the heart the Red Knights displayed.
“I remember us being up and them fighting back,” he said. “We had a 19-point lead and they got it down to seven (in the fourth quarter). They never quit. They were playing every play like it was their last.”
Even with four starters back from a team that won six straight postseason games last year it has not been a seamless return to the Elite Eight for the Red Raiders. They, too, had their hiccups. They were 7-4 in early January after losses to Constitution, Central York, Spring-Ford and West Chester Henderson (Central York and Spring-Ford have also reached the quarterfinals.)
The Red Raiders rebounded with a big second half and won their first Ches-Mont League championship in seven years.
They were the No. 5 seed in the District 1 Tournament but finished sixth after losing 67-64 at Chester in the quarterfinals and then to No. 6 Methacton 47-42 in the fifth-place game.
The Red Raiders have rebounded in the state tournament with a 57-46 win over District 11 runner-up Liberty and a 52-37 win over District 3 champ Cumberland Valley. Reading lost to Cumberland Valley 66-47 in a district semifinal.
Dior Kennedy, a 6-3 senior guard, is Coatesville’s top player. He averages 17 points, six rebounds and four assists. He had 16 points against Reading earlier this season.
Senior guard Zuli Harris averages 10 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He had 10 points in the first meeting.
Allen graduated from Coatesville in 2001 after scoring over 2,300 points to break Rip Hamilton’s program record and leading the Red Raiders to their only state championship. He was a two-time All-State pick who went on to become one of the top players in Seton Hall history.
He also led the Red Raiders to four straight wins over the Red Knights – few players can say that — but never faced the in the state tournament,
Reading and Coatesville have met just twice in March, splitting a pair of games. Reading won the first 54-50 in a 1978 second-round game. Coatesville took the next, winning 51-46 in the opening round.
The Red Knights lead the series 35-27 but have lost three straight and haven’t beaten the Red Raiders since the 2017-18 season.
