Ryan, William Tennent finish strong to beat Gloucester Tech
WARMINSTER >> For six out of the eight quarters of the William Tennent Holiday Classic, William Tennent’s offense struggled. Fortunately the quarters the Panthers were good in came in crunch time.
After pulling away from Swenson in the final quarter Monday night, Tennent looked to pull the same trick Tuesday against Gloucester County Institute of Technology. Only this time, the Panthers were mounting their fourth-quarter surge from behind. Tennent pulled off the comeback as it closed out Gloucester 43-39 in the tournament championship game.
“They packed the zone in defensively and we had to get the tempo going a little differently,” Tennent coach Robert Mulville said. “We were finally able to do that in the fourth quarter, get some turnovers and got ourselves back into the game.”
As the game hit the final frame, the Panthers trailed by seven points. It took Tennent just 54 seconds to tie the game at 30 as John Ryan made a bucket on the opening possession of the period, stole the Gloucester inbounds pass and Pat McCauley banged in a three in transition on the next possession.
Even though the Panthers had tied the game so quickly, they still opted to stay in their full-court pressure defense that continued to work. Gloucester caught Tennent a couple times in the press, leading to a 6-0 run over about a minute span in the middle of the quarter, but for the most part the Panther D was very effective.
“We had to stay out of foul trouble and then hopefully get some turnovers,” said Mulville of the decision to stay in the pressure defense. “I think they got one or two easy buckets out of it but I think overall it was pretty effective.”
Offensively, Ryan was brilliant once again for the Panthers, especially with the game on the line in the fourth when he netted 11 of his game-high 18 points. Ryan was the beneficiary of couple nice passes, namely from guard Matt Berndlmaier, who threw a couple of nice touch lob passes for the long forward.
Ryan is no secret in the Tennent offense, he is its go-to scorer and in the two Holiday Classic games in the fourth quarter, where the Panthers won the games, he came up big scoring 18 of his 34 tournament points in the final period.
“You’re going to have to spend a lot energy playing John,” Mulville said. “He’s in pretty good shape so if we can wear teams down eventually he’s going to find an advantage and he’s been able to do that for us late in the fourth quarter.”
For the Panthers its back to a sobering reality as it will pick back up with tough Suburban One National Conference play Tuesday against what might be the best team in the conference in Abington.
