Division title in hand, Fleetwood Tigers look to add more history to resume

Nate Herb remembers going to Fleetwood basketball games as a kid and watching the Tigers lose game after game.

“It wasn’t looking good,” he said. “Honestly, it was bad to watch.”

That didn’t deter him or classmates Jake Karnish or Aiden Soumas. They were determined to do better.

“We knew once we got up here we could change Fleetwood history,” Herb said after scoring a career-high 22 points Friday as the Tigers made a little history by beating Schuylkill Valley 78-63 to clinch their second straight Berks Conference Division III title.

It had been 67 years since Fleetwood won back-to-back titles. The Tigers (9-0, 18-1) snapped a 61-year drought by winning the division a year ago, reached the Berks playffs for the first time in 19 seasons and districts for the first time since 2000.

It was all a really big deal.

Friday the celebration was a bit more muted. The Tigers entered the season as heavy favorites and confident they could take things a step or two farther than a year ago.

“We can definitely appreciate where we are right now,” said Herb, “but counties and districts are the bigger goals for us. Playing top schools like Reading, Wilson and Berks Catholic, those are the teams that we want to compete with, not the lower III-IV teams.”

For the second time this season the Tigers got plenty of competition from the Panthers (6-3, 12-5), who refused to go away. Schuylkill Valley fell behind by nine points in the first quarter, then by 11 in the third. Each time it dug in and made a run.

Dominic Giuffre’s transition basket in the opening minute of the fourth quarter capped a 13-3 run and trimmed Fleetwood’s lead to 48-47. The Tigers responded with a 12-point run to put the game away.

“Down the stretch, we’re relentless,” said Karnish. “We just play with our heads and that’s what carried us to the win.”

That and some really torrid shooting. Herb opened the game with a pair of 3-pointers, went 5-for-5 from the field in the first quarter and 8-of-10 overall.

Soumas was good on 10-of-13 shots from the field, 4-of-4 from the line and finished with a career-high 26 points. A lot of those points came in transition as he repeatedly raced downcourt.

“Aiden and Nate played extremely well,” Karnish said. “You couldn’t ask for anything more from them. They saw they had the mismatch, they saw what they wanted, and they just went to work.”

Karnish, getting plenty of attention and an active defensive effort from Giuffre, got only seven shots but finished with a triple-double: 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting, 10 assists, 10 rebounds. Not many players can produce that kind of stat line in a 32-minute high school game.

Karnish found open shooters on the wing and got the ball out in transition, sparking the Tigers to an 11-of-14 shooting performance in the opening period and 68 percent shooting overall. Impressive against a team that plays as hard defensively as Schuylkill Valley.

“(It was great) to see us firing on all cylinders,” Karnish said. “Nate was hitting 3’s, ‘Sou’ hit some — even Liam (Hilburt) was hitting some 3’s. It was just great to see us all doing our thing.”

Hilburt hit three 3’s and scored all of his 11 points in the second half; he’s had a dozen 3’s over the last four games.

The Tigers were a scalding 10-of-15 from 3-point range and matched their season scoring high. The 78 points are the most allowed by Schuylkill Valley. The Panthers were allowing 52.9 points per game.

Elijah Houser scored a team- and career-high 19 points for the Panthers (6-3 Berks III, 12-5), who remain in strong position to qualify for the Berks Conference playoffs in the Berks III-IV runner-up spot despite the loss.

Herb got in four trouble and scored just three points in the first game against Schuylkill Valley, a 59-44 win. He’s been top of his game in recent weeks and has scored in double figures five straight games, helping ease the load on Karnish and Soumas.

“The last 10 games he’s been playing up here,” Tigers coach Terry Sitler said, holding his hands above his head. “I’m just so proud of the way he’s come around. He’s hitting the 3’s and the foul shots.”

“They were driving, kicking to the open 3,” Herb said of Karnish and Soumas, “and I was knocking ’em down.”

Happy as they are with another division title the Tigers have bigger fish to fry. They are ranked No. 2 in the District 3 Class 4A power ratings. They need two wins for their first 20-win season since 1984. By closing 3-0 they’ll finish at 21-1 and with the best regular season record in program history.

“I feel like we’ve turned the program around,” Karnish said. “We go in there, our fans are expecting wins. We have high expectations.”

“In fifth and sixth grades we moved up to play the bigger schools: Wilson, Reading, Exeter,” Herb recalled. “We knew that would get us ready for high school. It’s really showing now. We’re coming out, having a great season and we’re looking to finish strong.”

	1	2	3	4	Final
Schuylkill Valley	15	18	12	18	63
Fleetwood	26	11	11	30	78

Panthers (12-5)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Giuffre	7-16	2-4	2-4	0	6	18
Zimmerman	1-4	0-0	0-1	1	1	2
Houser	7-10	5-8	0-2	2	4	19
Rajnath	3-9	3-3	1-4	1	0	10
Hohenadel	2-7	4-4	1-5	0	0	9
Faulk	0-1	1-2	0-0	1	1	1
Spotts	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Gerner	2-3	0-0	0-0	0	0	4
Johnson	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Miley	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Kemmerer	0-2	0-0	0-0	0	1	0
McGonigle	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Dissinger	0-1	0-0	0-0	0	2	0
Totals	22-52	15-21	4-16	5	15-17	63

Tigers (18-1)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Holburt	3-5	2-2	3-3	0	4	11
Soumas	10-13	4-4	2-4	7	4	26
Williams	1-4	0-0	1-3	2	3	3
Herb	8-10	3-5	3-4	2	2	22
Karnish	5-7	3-3	1-1	10	10	14
Svoboda	1-2	0-0	0-0	0	2	2
Loy	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Reimert	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Sandt	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Vorse	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Totals	28-41	12-14	10-15	18	25-28	78

Turnovers: Schuylkill Valley 7, Fleetwood 18.