Despite youth, Bullets on target for another District 3 playoff appearance

Brandywine Heights hasn’t won quite enough games for its impressive freshman class to earn a nickname like Michigan’s “Fab Five” of the early 1990’s, but a year or two from now it might.

The Bullets are headed back to the District 3 Tournament with a lineup that includes three freshmen and three sophomores among its top six scorers. There’s just one senior on the roster.

“It’s (about) as young as you get,” Bullets coach Dave Moseley said of his starting lineup, which includes freshmen Noah Walakovitz, Nate Winkler and Scotty Ray, along with sophs Jayden Kantner and Tommy Clark.

Brandywine won four of its first five games and has been above, or hovering around, .500 most of the season. A 53-43 loss at Wyomissing Wednesday dropped the Bullets to 9-11; they’ll likely go into districts with a losing record but with more wins than last season, when they finished 7-16.

For a team this young to see the postseason is a coup. Entering next season they figure to be a top contender for the Berks Conference Division IV title. They’ll be the only team in the division unaffected by graduation.

“Everyone understands we’re here to win this year,” said Moseley, a former Bullet now in his second year as head coach, “but (also) to build for a few more years.”

The Bullets sent out a message earlier in the week that the future is closer than people think. They dug out of a 15-point second-half hole against Berks IV champ Oley Valley with a huge rally and sent the game to overtime before falling 70-66.

“I don’t think they have any doubt they can compete with the best of ‘em, like Oley,” Moseley said. “They’ve always been pretty fearless and competitive. Rarely do they back down from a tough match-up. They had a lot of success (coming up). We knew what we were getting when they came up to the high school level.”

Kantner, a flashy guard who likes to push the pace, leads the team in scoring at 12.5 per game. He had a coming-out party last season when he scored a game-high 21 points in a 48-44 loss at Tulpehocken in the District 3 Class 3A quarterfinals. Earlier this season he dropped 31 on the Trojans and 21 against the defensive-minded Lynx.

“He’s our engine,” Moseley said. “He just wants to go-go-go. That’s how we like to play. He’s been pretty steady and consistent and has made some big improvements from last year.”

Walakovitz  averages 10.2 points; he scored a season-high 20 in a win over Salisbury and 17 the other night against Oley.

Winkler averages 9.0 points per game and leads the team with 21 3-pointers; he had a season-high 18 points in the overtime loss to Oley.

They are among the most promising freshmen in the Berks Conference.

The young Bullets all run the floor well, know how to pass, cut and screen, and get to the basket. It’s easy to see they’ve been playing together for several years.

They swarm and trap on defense, like to press fullcourt, aggressively go for blocked shots and scrape on the boards. Young as they are they run a disciplined offense and don’t jack up a lot of 3’s.

Their biggest problem – no pun intended – is their lack of size, and bulk. The five starters average 5-9 and look like they could share a pizza and struggle to finish it.

“We’re gonna have to get in the weight room (in the offseason),” Mosley concedes.

That lack of bulk helps them fly around the court and force 20-plus turnovers per game.

“We get after teams,” Moseley said. “We know we don’t have any size advantage, but we’ve got an advantage with our quickness.”

The young Bullets play fast and loose and don’t lack confidence. Moseley said their success last summer in a Lehigh Valley junior varsity league helped them grow.

“We played Whitehall, Emmaus, Parkland – big schools – and were beating their freshmen and sophomore teams.”

Brandywine hasn’t beaten a team with a winning record this season but it has played some playoff-bound teams tough. It lost by four points to both Schuylkill Valley and unbeaten Linville Hill Christian, ranked No. 1 in the District 3 Class 3A power ratings.

Their only bad losses have come to Berks III champ Fleetwood, by 39 and 34 points.

“We’re close to .500, but we’ve had a lot of close games that we’ve lost,” Moseley said. “Record-wise, we’re where we thought we would be, but with a lot of room for improvement, too.”