Jenkintown starts BAL tournament with win over Devon Prep
JENKINTOWN >> After opening its season 10-1, the best start in school history, Jenkintown probably did not expect to hit the Bicentennial Athletic League tournament as the No.5 seed.
After an ankle injury to the Drakes’ best player Colin Mulvaney and some other key secondary players such as Andres Madden and Michael DiValentino, Jenkintown struggled down the stretch, finishing the regular season 14-8 with a 8-6 mark in the BAL, including a 41-39 loss to Monday’s opponent Devon Prep a little less than two weeks ago.
“We’ve really had some stuff happen to us in the middle of the season,” Jenkintown coach Wes Emme said. “You’re 12-2, 13-3, you feel like you’re rolling, you’re feeling good going into league play and then a (couple guys) get injured.”
“It’s been an up and down past few weeks but fell like we’re finally getting back to where we were.”
With a team finally starting to round back into form, Jenkintown took apart 11th-seeded Devon Prep to advance in the Bicentennial playoffs with a 55-24 first-round victory over the Tide.
Monday’s game marked the fourth game back from injury for Mulvaney and he looked back to old self. For starters, he once again found himself at the top of the scoresheet for the Drakes, netting a team-high 18 points in three quarters of work.
“He was pretty spectacular in the first half, I think he had one miss,” Emme said. “We’re going to go as he goes and we’re going to go as our seniors go and he was really good tonight.”
As for the rest of the Drakes, they played their typical hard-nose, disciplined and smart style of ball on both ends of the court. Defensively, Jenkintown limited the talented combination of Dan Shannon and Danny Brace to a combined seven points. Carl Robinson did a particularly good job defending Brace in the paint and collecting rebounds that allowed Jenkintown to get into transition.
“We knew they had a couple of really good players. Shannon and Brace are talented, all-league players and we wanted to make sure we limited what those guys were able to do,” Emme said.
The pressure that the Drakes applied finally broke the Tide in the third quarter. After Jenkintown closed out the second quarter on an 18-2 run it hit Devon Prep with a 9-0 run that spanned only 57 seconds to open the third quarter.
“They got us here (at home) and that really stung. That’s kind of where the rock bottom was,” Emme said.
Emme says he doesn’t like to play the “what if” game when it comes to talking about how maybe league play in the regular season might have gone a little differently had the Drakes remained at full strength. But everything that Jenkintown wants to accomplish, and it’s plenty, is still right in front of it.
“I don’t want (to do) the could’ve, should’ve, would’ve,” Emme said. “Would we be a different team if Colin Mulvaney is on the floor? I think that is blatantly obvious. And that would be if he’s at 50 percent or 100 percent. If Andres Madden is on the floor, we’re a better team. But we lost those games and that’s it so now we got another challenge in front of us.”
Up next for the Drakes a very good Faith Christian team. Faith poses what would look like a matchup problem for the Drakes, but it is impossible to count out this scrappy, motivated, senior-laden and finally healthy team.
