Reece Garvin keys Exeter defensive effort in key win over Wilson

By Mike Mitchell Jr. — MikeDragoSports.com correspondent

The old adage “offense wins games, but defense wins championships” was on full display in West Lawn Friday night.

Exeter used tenacious man-to-man defense to hold Wilson to a season scoring low in a 48-35 Berks Conference crossover victory.

Eagles junior guard Reece Garvin was a key, playing excellent defense on Wilson’s leading scorer Aiden Melograna.

“One thing we stress every night is to make people work for everything they get,” said Exeter coach Matt Ashcroft.  “Reece’s wingspan makes it tough for shooters to get good, clean looks against him.  His length bothers people. 

“I don’t know if there’s another shooter around with the range of Melograna.  Reece did an outstanding job of fighting through screens and making him earn everything he got tonight.”

Melograna finished with 11 points, just below his average.

“It was really tough to guard Melograna,” Garvin said. “He is a great player and they do such a good job setting screens for him.  It was tough getting through all of those screens.”

Senior center Anthony Caccese scored 20 points, 16 in the second half, and pulled down 10 rebounds to lead the Eagles.

Most of his points came from using excellent post position and taking terrific feeds from Kevin Saenz, Garvin, and Zyion Paschall.

“We can shoot the ball, but our goal is balance”  Ashcroft said.  “We always try to get the ball inside so we can open up the outside. 

“We’ve had some great shooting nights and we’ve had some nights where we haven’t shot so well.  We need to have balance.  Tonight we did.”

“When we get the ball inside it helps open up the outside for our shooters,” said Caccese.  “We came in with the mindset of establishing the post because of our size advantage.”

Another key for the Eagles was the overall play of Saenz, a junior wing.  He scored 13 points, had seven assists and three rebounds.   He also played excellent defense and came up with several loose balls.  

“I strive to be the best two-way player I can,” Saenz said. “I’ve been struggling lately.  I worked hard in practice and knew I had to play better tonight than I had been. This was a big game tonight. We knew we had to win this one, and we came out and battled.”

The win helped Exeter keep pace with Berks II leader Berks Catholic; each team has two league losses. They meet again Feb. 2 at Wolf Gymnasium. The Saints took the first meeting 73-63.

“We knew this was a huge game for counties,” Garvin said. ” We came in expecting to win and we fought hard to do so.”

The Bulldogs (5-3 Berks I, 13-5) played without senior guard Cam Jones, who was on a visit to Holy Cross, where he will play football.

Wilson coach Matt Coldren didn’t use that as an excuse.

“The tougher, better team tonight won,” he said. “You play how you practice.   We had a rough week of practice.”

The win was the sixth in seven games for Exeter.

“You can tell by watching us play that these kids are gym rats,” Ashcroft said. “Tonight we played with what I like to call controlled aggression.”

The win was the third in the last four meeting for the Eagles over the Bulldogs. They beat them twice last season, upsetting them in a Berks Conference quarterfinal.

	1	2	3	4	Final
Exeter	13	14	13	8	48
Wilson	7	8	16	4	35

Eagles (12-5)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Garvin	3	0-1	0	2	3	6
Saenz	1	2-4	3	7	3	13
Caccese	10	0-0	0	0	10	20
Paschell	3	0-0	0	2	1	6
Snyder	0	0-0	0	0	0	0
Dauble	0	0-0	1	0	6	3
Totals	17	2-5	4	11	23	48

Bulldogs (13-5)	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Melograna	1	3-4	2	2	3	11
Hardinger	1	0-0	0	2	1	2
Gruber	4	0-0	0	1	2	8
Odiale	4	1-3	0	0	6	9
Breslin	2	1-2	0	1	3	5
Pena	0	0-0	0	0	2	0
Hunsicker	0	0-0	0	1	1	0
McFadden	0	0-0	0	0	0	0
Cieniewicz	0	0-0	0	0	0	0
Totals	12	5-9	2	7	18	35

Turnovers: Wilson 9, Exeter 5.