Saints win a ‘3-for-all’ against Mustangs to remain unbeaten

A few minutes before tip-off Tuesday Snip Esterly was concerned about the way his Berks Catholic team had been shooting the ball through the first few games. He expected this to be the best-shooting Saints team he has ever coached, but it wasn’t happening.

“We can shoot,” he insisted.

Turns out he was right. Ninety seconds into the Saints’ Berks I match-up against visiting Gov. Mifflin senior wing Aidan Sands dropped a 3-pointer. A couple minutes later Sands hit another. Ryan Koch followed by hitting his first two shots, both from beyond the arc, the second deeper than the first.

“The 3’s were droppin’ ” Esterly said later, much happier this time after the Saints dodged one last potential dagger and held off the Mustangs to remain unbeaten. “They were dropping from everywhere.”

It it weren’t for the uniforms you’d swear this wasn’t Mifflin playing Berks Catholic. Those programs are each defense-first, look for the ‘3’ last. They’re comfortable in the 40’s, happy in the 50’s, but neither Esterly or his Mifflin counterpart, Kyle Conrad, find it necessary to put up a lot of 3’s or score a lot of points. Games played in the 70’s are not in either program’s blueprint.

The guys they put out on the court Tuesday had other ideas.

Mifflin’s Delsin McNeil looked like he was going for a 1,000 points — all in one night. He opened the game with a 3-pointer and had the Mustangs’ first 10 points, all in less than three minutes.

BC’s Josiah Jordan nearly matched him; he had nine points in the first quarter, on the way to a game- and career-high 26.

“I thought it was a really good high school basketball game,” said Esterly, who didn’t seem to mind seeing the scoreboard go on tilt. “Both teams played their hearts out. They had a run, we had a run.”

The highest-scoring game in series history (by a mile) featured critical runs by each side. The Saints (2-0, 5-0) won it with a near-perfect four-minute stretch early in the fourth quarter that saw them score on five of their first six possessions and turn a four-point deficit into a five-point lead.

At the same point the Mustangs went cold, had some poor possessions, put up a few up a few shots too quickly. They went over 4 1/2 minutes without a point, and it proved costly in such a high-scoring battle. They blinked first.

“We just knew that we needed to win this game,” said Sands. “We all fight, we’ll never give up in a game no matter what the score is. We knew if we played hard we were gonna win it.”

The Mustangs (1-1, 2-3), down seven with a minute to go, made a bold comeback attempt and did everything right in the final minute.

McNeil hit both ends of a one-and-one. Tyler Minick drained a big 3 to make it a one-possession game with 19 seconds left. Matt Harley grabbed a rebound, dribbled out to the 3-point line and dropped a shot to make it 71-70 with 2.3 left.

Conrad was upset about his team’s defense but they couldn’t stop the Saints from making free throws. They closed it out by hitting 7-of-8 over the last 90 seconds, and that won it for them.

The Mustangs decided to put Jordan, a sub 40-percent foul shooter, on the line. He ended up hitting 8-of-12 to foul those plans.

He missed once with 2.2 seconds left, giving the Mustangs a tiny window of opportunity. Harley, who won a similar nailbiter last week against Wilson, flashed open at the 3-point line just before the buzzer but couldn’t sink another heart-breaker.

It was a terrific high school basketball game and especially well-played considering it’s still a few days shy of Christmas. The Saints shot 64 percent from the field and made half their 16 3’s. Almost everyone seemed to enjoy it. Almost.

“Seventy’s entirely too many to give up,” Conrad said. “We scored with them, put up 70 ourselves, but we’ve got to do better on the defensive end to win close games like that.”

The Mustangs, unlike in recent years, are able to put the ball in the basket and that’s making their games a lot more fun to watch. Gerrell McNeil turned it on after a slow start and finshed with 17 points, and a pair of 3’s.

Xavier Price, a much-improved 6-6 senior, came off the Mifflin bench to score 17 points — 13 in the second quarter. He found ways to get open and went after it hard on the offensive glass. If he keeps doing that it’ll free up Harley and the McNeil twins on the perimeter and add even more momentum to the Mustangs’ playoff push.

The Saints have plenty of offensive weapons, too. Jordan is just a handful. He gets to the basket against anyone and generates offense off his defense. He made the play of the game with 1:51 left and the Saints up three. He picked off an inbounds pass, then, with Delsin McNeil hanging all over him, converted an acrobatic layup for 65-60 lead.

“He’s a tough match-up,” Conrad allowed.

The Saints have other capable scorers in Koch, who finished with 17 points; Sands, who had 12 points and eight assists; and Jack Miller, who nailed a clutch 3 in the game-turning 9-0 run and made both ends of a one-and-one with 15 seconds left.

The Saints and Mustangs meet again five weeks from now in Shillington and may run into each other again in the Berks Conference playoffs. They’ll be battling it out with Exeter and Wilson in what’s shaping up as a great race for second place in Berks I behind Reading High.

“We wanted to put it on this team,” Jordan said of Mifflin. “We know they came in off a strong win over Wilson, and they had their hopes up, so we took the air out of them. We all came together when we needed to; it was really nice to see.”

	1	2	3	4	Final
Gov. Mifflin	17	19	19	15	70
Berks Catholic	23	15	13	21	72

VISITOR	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Harley	3-10	0-0	2-7	0	4	8
D. McNeil	4-12	2-2	2-6	2	5	12
G. McNeil	6-13	3-3	2-5	3	4	17
Woolwine	3-6	0-0	1-2	0	0	7
Ziolkowski	1-1	2-2	0-0	0	3	4
Minick	2-4	0-0	1-2	2	0	5
Price	8-11	1-2	0-0	1	8	17
Kapoor	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Totals	27-57	8-9	8-22	8	24/27	70

HOME	FG	FT	3’s	A	R	Points
Sands	4-10	2-2	2-5	8	4	12
Jordan	9-13	8-12	0-1	1	2	26
Koch	6-8	1-1	4-6	0	5	17
Miller	3-5	2-2	2-4	0	2	10
Givens	2-2	1-2	0-0	3	3	5
Reinhart	0-0	0-0	0-0	0	0	0
Lawlor	1-1	0-0	0-0	0	0	2
Totals	25-39	14-19	8-16	12	17/19	72

3-pointers: G. McNeil 2, D. McNeil 2, Harley 2, Minick 1, Woolwine 1; Koch 4, Miller 2, Sands 2.Turnovers: Gov. Mifflin 8, Berks Catholic 12.