Abington claims 4th straight SOL National title
ABINGTON >> Having a Senior Night is always a special time for the class being celebrated. For the Abington boys basketball team’s seniors ,they can lay claim to something that no other class in school history can.
With their 41-37 win over Council Rock North Tuesday night, the Ghosts locked up the Suburban One National Conference title. The win marked the fourth year in a row the Ghosts won the SOL National and represents the first team in school history to do so.
“It’s a great feeling,” Abington senior forward Brian Close said. “The fourth time in a row, it’s the first time in school history so it’s great to know that as a senior class we were able to accomplish such a great feat for our school.”
All four conference championships have come under head coach Charles Grasty. Grasty was an assistant from 2005-2009 and took over a program that was in a very low spot. Grasty, a 1990 Abington graduate who played under Jim Wilkinson, took over as head coach in 2010. Grasty was coaching in his 160th game Tuesday night, the win putting him at 120-40 in his Ghosts coaching tenure.
As for Tuesday night’s game, the Ghosts showed that they are the best team in the conference and probably the deepest. While of course Grasty put an emphasis on playing his seniors, he used all 15 players off his bench with many seeing a significant amount of time.
“Our seniors, I told them yesterday, you guys are going to start if you play well you stay in,” Grasty said of going with an unorthodox rotation longer than expected. “I just felt like if I look down to the end of the bench a person can give us a spark, or I need a guard in this spot or a big in this spot I feel comfortable going to our bench.”
The Ghosts pounded the Indians inside. Abington was proving the philosophy that the highest percentage shot is a layup as the Ghosts went inside to their bigs and went back to well over and over again.
“We have good bigs that we like to play through and we know that they can provide the scoring and stuff that we need to be able to win games,” Close said.
Close and Jack Steinman ate early and freshman Eric Dixon started taking over in the second quarter as he finished with a team-high 12 points. Abington had a particularly favorable matchup with the size advantage it had over Council Rock North but Grasty maintained the team’s strategy was game or opponent specific.
“(We go inside) against everybody, we haven’t changed anything up,” Grasty said. “That’s our style this year, we’re playing inside out, we like to play inside out and that’s the way we’re going to go this year.”
Four straight conference championships means larger things as well for Grasty and the Ghosts. For starters it obviously means Abington will be making its fourth straight trip to the District 1-AAAA playoffs, where this year it will be serving as defending champions.
Abington has had postseason success in recent years. The aforementioned district title a year ago, a state semifinal appearance in 2013-2014 and the first 11 seed to make a District 1-AAAA semifinals in ’11-’12.
Some might believe that the Ghosts can’t repeat as district champions as it lost two 1,000 point career scorers in Amir Hinton and Matt Penecale, but Grasty throws caution to those that might be sleeping on this year’s squad.
“I told the guys don’t listen to the outsiders,” Grasty said. “Every year we hear it as a staff starting as far back as five years ago. We lost three really good guards and we won a league title. We had guys like Anthony Lee and those guys leave, they said we weren’t going to be any good and we won another league title. They left and they said we only had Matt (Penecale) and Amir (Hinton) and we won a district title. So I tell them don’t listen to the outsiders let’s just stick to what we have.”
