Intense drive carried Hector Tiburcio to great heights at Antietam

Mike Green didn’t have high hopes for Hector Tiburcio when the freshman appeared at Antietam basketball practice in 2018.

“He was short, pudgy — he wasn’t much to look at, I can tell you that,” the Mounts coach said. “He didn’t look like he was going to be much of a basketball player.”

Tiburcio had heard that before. He was too small to play basketball, he was told as a sixth-grader. He was determined to prove people wrong. A growth spurt helped — he grew nearly seven inches between sixth and seventh grade. So did his work ethic.

Green soon came around.

“The first couple practices, (he was) very aggressive, a tough kid,” the longtime Mounts coach recalled. “He wasn’t exactly a physical specimen, but he had the drive to play.”

That drive carried Tiburcio to great heights at Antietam.

He led the team in scoring three straight seasons and finished with 1,426 points, most ever for an Antietam player and second most in program history.

He played in three district championship games. Wednesday he was named to the Pennsylvania Sportswriters Class 2A All-State third team for the second straight year.

Only one other Mounts player has been named All-State twice: Fred Wittich, the program’s all-time scoring leader, who was a first-team pick as a senior and an honorable mention pick as a junior.

Last year Tiburcio became the first Mounts player in nearly 50 years to crack the top rung of state basketball. Not bad for a kid who used to sit at the end of the bench and see time only in the final minutes of the game, after things had been decided.

Tiburcio led the Mounts in scoring (16.3), rebounds (8.5), assists (3.4), steals (2.8) and with 23 3-pointers as a senior. That tells you about his all-around game.

He’s 6-2 and listed as a forward but really played all over the floor, sometimes taking over at the point, other times posting up down low, always hitting the boards hard. That’s what initially endeared him to his coach.

“I saw in practice how he was just physically stronger than most of the kids,” Green said. “Even the upperclassmen had a tough time (with him). He was a handful for the guards to cover.

“He’d get down low and he thought every rebound was his, even though he was clearly not the tallest guy on the floor. That toughness really helped him out.”

Tiburcio made an impact off the bench early in his freshman season and soon moved into the starting lineup. He averaged 11.8 points, fourth on the team, which went 17-8 and reached the District 3 Class 2A title game, as well as the state tournament.

Tiburcio averaged 16.8 points as a sophomore and 18.3 as a junior. His scoring went down this season as he became more of a facilitator and tried to set up emerging sophomore Josh McKoy, who averaged 15.4 points.

It all worked well as the Mounts opened 14-1, won the Berks IV title, earned the No. 1 seed in the district tournament and made it back to the district title game. Once again they fell to Lancaster Mennonite in a pitched battle that saw Tiburcio saddled with early fouls but fighting hard to the end.

The Mounts gave it their best shot. Four times they fell behind and came back to take the lead. Antietam led 41-39 after three quarters and 46-43 after Tiburcio snared a rebound and fired upcourt to Jovan Hollis for a transition bucket. They didn’t score again in what became a 52-46 loss.

“I wish it could’ve been a different outcome,” Tiburcio said quietly after the game. “The thing that bothers me the most is that it was my last opportunity to get it done. After this, there’s no more. I won’t be here at Giant Center any more. I didn’t get it done.”

Tiburcio got plenty done. He led the Mounts to their first division title in seven seasons, their first 20-win season in 28 years and became the first in the program to play in three district championship games in 50 years.

“He made himself into a really good player,” Green said. “It didn’t look like he’d be much in eighth grade.”