Archbishop Wood follows Phillips’ lead to PIAA playoffs

WARMINSTER >> Julius Phillips embodies the old adage that hard work pays off.

The lone senior on Archbishop Wood’s boys basketball team, Phillips has shouldered a heavy load this season in terms of what he does on the court but off it as well. As much as it’s his team it’s just as much not his team, with Phillips happy to share any success with the crop of sophomores and juniors he’ll be passing the torch to whenever the season ends.

With at most five games left in his high school career, Phillips admitted he’s thought about having to leave his team behind but also how this year has shaped him in ways he didn’t expect.

“My leadership skills improved dramatically, we have a talented team but we needed experience,” Phillips said prior to practice on Wednesday. “I think, if we had a chance to start over with the experienced we gained during the season, we would have played at the Palestra. I’ve worked a lot on my body, I’m shooting the ball well but these guys have helped me as much as I hope I’ve helped them.”

Phillips first made his mark during the 2016-17 season when, as a sophomore, he found a role as an energizing athletic presence on the team that won the program’s first PCL and state championships. An explosive athlete, sophomore Phillips could provide a highlight dunk but didn’t need to give too much more on a loaded, senior-heavy team.

That team, led by Collin Gillespie, Matt Cerruti and Keith Otto, still embraced Phillips and in what served as a bit of a symbolic moment, Gillespie’s last assist at Wood went to Phillips in the state championship game. While he moved into the starting lineup last year, Phillips had another large senior class – anchored by Andrew Funk, Ty Pickron, Seth Pinkney and Karrington Wallace – to carry the role of leadership.

When those guys moved on, it left Phillips as the sole guy on the roster who had attained the two biggest prizes the program chases every season.

Following the lead of prior leaders like Tommy Funk, Gillespie and Pickron, Phillips has endured the coaches’ wrath and responded because he knows his teammates are watching.

“He’s worked hard the last three summers, it was easy to play that sophomore year, you basically just showed up but he learned from those guys how to be a leader,” Wood coach John Mosco said. “The one thing that worried me, I knew we’d be young and talented, but we didn’t have a lot of leadership. All spring, all summer, he continued to lead and helped all the young guys. At the end of the McDevitt game (in the PCL quarterfinals) it was him and Rahsool (Diggins) grabbing all our guys together.”

The incalculable hours Phillips has put into his craft are reflected in his play. While he can still jump with the best of them, the senior has rounded out his game over the past three years. It was never a matter of desire, as his work ethic has always been through the roof, but of need.

In a league where, as Phillips put it, “even the little guys can jump with you,” he couldn’t rely on just being a great athlete. Mosco and his staff thought Phillips would grow a little taller than he has, but at 6-foot-5, he’s still got the size to hang with anyone on the perimeter or in the post.

Phillips earned second team All-PCL honors this season but Mosco said the senior wing takes more pride in his academic honors, which include several inclusions on Wood’s honors roll.

Earlier this season, the coaching staff tweeted Phillips averages of nearly 16 points per game and eight rebounds in PCL play, a post that many of his former teammates like Gillespie, Cerruti, Pickron and Tommy and Andrew Funk all responded to with their own acknowledgment of the senior’s progress. Phillips said it was just another example of the brotherhood that exists in the program, one he’s tried to keep going this year.

“I took everything I could from those guys and tried to combine it with our young team,” Phillips said. “In the beginning of the season, we were good but we’re so much better now. I’m proud of all these guys, they work hard every day, they don’t talk back, they just listen. You can tell how much they’ve matured.

“It’s a brotherhood here, it’s how we’ve done it since I’ve been here, before I came here and I know it’s going to be like that after I leave here.”

Mosco pointed out that despite being the sole senior, Phillips never made it about himself. He’s never hogged shots, he’s embraced and encouraged sophomore point guard Rahsool Diggins to share his role as a leader and he’s taken as much joy in anyone else’s accomplishments as his own.

The senior hit a buzzer-beater in the team’s Slam Dunk at the Beach game in December, but Phillips listed his favorite moment of the season as the team’s home opener where the five starters all scored in the first few possessions of the game. Mosco said nobody was happier when Jaylen Stinson hit a buzzer-beater to beat Archbishop Ryan than Phillips and after the Vikings topped Mastery Charter North to win the District 12 5A title on Saturday, the senior wouldn’t let go of the trophy.

“No lie, halftime of the game I tore into him, right or wrong, and he stood there and took it and then I could chew everybody else out and to their credit, they responded in the third quarter,” Mosco said. “That’s the thing Tommy Funk and Collin understood, they took the blame for other people even when it wasn’t their mistake and Julius has learned how to handle that.”

At the top of Phillips’ own Twitter page, he’s pinned a post from May of 2016 showing him during an open gym workout with a message of self-motivation. Phillips, who hails from North Philadelphia, knows the type of sacrifices all the people in his life – his father and aunt, teachers and coaches – have made for him, so he repays it with work.

Phillips currently holds college offers from Holy Family, Chestnut Hill and Georgian Court and said getting that first offer was a weight off his chest. The senior added not many people go to college where he comes from and it’s something he takes seriously, carrying a 3.5 GPA and looking to study in a field of business management or software technology.

“I look at that every day to remind myself to keep working and that it’s going to pay off,” Phillips said. “I just have to keep making smart decisions and do the things that make people successful in college. I see Collin taking charges and dive on the floor and it’s what I’m trying to do.”

Mosco had to chuckle when he talked about Phillips’ inclusive nature and how every year, it meant him bringing someone with him to fall open gyms that had no chance to make the team. Phillips is a regular at Wood girls’ basketball games and he makes sure at least a few of his teammates come with him

“That’s what I’m proud of, he’s doing the work on and off the court,” Mosco said. “I think of him always with a smile on his face. He comes from a good family and gets a lot of support, they sacrifice for him and it’s not about him, it’s about the team.

“He really cares about his teammates and his fellow students.”

Phillips wasn’t shy about his expectations for where his high school career will end, saying he thinks this team will win the state title. Wood’s run starts Friday night against Holy Ghost Prep in a 7pm start at Archbishop Carroll.

Mostly, he’s not ready to stop playing with the team he’s helped shape over the last few months.

“I’ve been thinking about that every day the last week,” Phillips said. “I love these guys with all my heart and I love this school with all my heart. Everybody in this school is like family to me, it’s why I come from an hour away, it means that much to me.”