King comeback leaves Episcopal all wet
PHILADELPHIA >> Episcopal Academy’s players had already trotted off the court at Chestnut Hill College, but one guy in navy blue and white hadn’t yet made it into the locker room.
Cracking a doorway in the back tunnel was Craig Conlin, the Churchmen’s coach. Conlin stood in the rain, hands on his hips, collecting his thoughts as his clothes collected rainwater.
Just one of those nights?
“We were very one-dimensional tonight,” said Conlin, whose Episcopal Academy team frittered away a sizable fourth-quarter lead in a 62-59 loss to Martin Luther King Wednesday night.
That one dimension to which Conlin was referring was Nick Alikakos. The All-Delco wing dropped in a game-best 35 points on 11-for-14 shooting from the field. The rest of the team collectively shot 9-for-28 to compile 24 points.
“Nick had 35, and I don’t know where anybody else was,” Conlin said. “We all have to step up — players, coaches, all of us. We have to do a better job at the end of quarters, end of halves, end of games. That came back to hurt us tonight.”
Episcopal Academy (9-4), playing on back-to-back nights in the Jameer Nelson/Pete Nelson Classic, looked battered in the fourth quarter against Martin Luther King (5-6). The Churchmen were outscored, 20-7, over the game’s final 5:16, after securing a 10-point lead, at 52-42.
What went wrong?
Alikakos went on a personal 9-0 run to open the fourth, with a pair of 3-point plays bookending a 24-footer, to give EA its largest lead of the contest. Then, the Churchmen’s offense dried up.
MLK staged a 7-0 run to cut its deficit to a single possession. Two minutes later, it still being a 3-point game, the Cougars’ Quadir Burgess went the other way off a steal by teammate Jabri McCall (19 points) for a transition layup, and then Burgess knocked down two free throws on a dead-ball foul after the play was over. That 4-point play put Martin Luther King ahead for good, with just under a minute to go.
“I mean, we just ran into a good team,” Alikakos said. “They started pressing us, playing good defense. We weren’t hitting shots. They just wanted it more at the end.”
When asked whether fatigue played a role in Episcopal Academy’s loss, the junior shrugged.
“You tell me,” he said.
His coach saw things differently, even in his team’s 13th game in 27 days.
“In the final minutes, I remember us making the same mistakes over and over and over again: Turnovers and an inability to make free throws,” Conlin said. “We all take part in this — the coaches, the players, even the referees. (The Cougars) shot 29 free throws to our 17.”
Episcopal Academy’s Matt Woods drained three 3-pointers in the second quarter to give the Churchmen some early breathing room, and Kyle Sacchetta logged a game-best nine assists with four steals before fouling out.
Outside of the Churchmen’s 10-point lead in the fourth quarter, they also owned separate leads of seven and nine points, in the second and third quarters, respectively.
“We were fine, doing our thing, up big on them, and we allowed it to get away from us. And we got away from what got us the lead in the first place,” Conlin said. “That’s got to change.”
