McFadden, Strath Haven erasing recent history

NETHER PROVIDENCE >> When Dave McFadden talked to his Strath Haven players for the first time late last spring, he wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room.

“Coach from the minute he came in said, I know what y’all did last year; we’re going to leave that in the past and start fresh right here,” point guard Jahmeir Springfield said Tuesday. “That’s one thing he emphasized.”

So in that spirit, let’s get the background out of the way quickly: McFadden’s first head coaching job was to take over a team that went 3-19 last season, 5-39 over the past two under coach Tom Dougherty. They endured a 19-game losing streak in the Central League around a winless league slate in 2013-14.

That history, no matter how maddening, was just that. There was no changing it, McFadden told his group. The only alternative was to prevent history from repeating itself.

One win at a time, McFadden’s bunch has suppressed any hint that this is substantially the same group that endured last year’s pains. That path leads them to Friday’s first-round District One Class AAAA contest in which No. 25 seed Hatboro-Horsham visits the No. 8 Panthers.

Even the most optimistic prognosticators couldn’t have expected McFadden to transform this team into a 19-4 outfit. They were one of the Central League’s most consistent teams, resisting the weekly pitfalls against inferior teams and losing to Ridley, Lower Merion and Conestoga in the Central League playoff semifinals. The only outlier was a 53-42 setback to Upper Darby in December.

The recipe for that success lies in the jelling of Haven’s core. They have six scorers who can contribute nightly. They’ve won when no one has gotten out of single-digits, comfortably executing in the halfcourt and defending. They have multiple post options in John Harrar and Josh Singleton, plus Cooper Driscoll off the bench.

Alex Ischiropoulos and Jayvon Green-Springfield can hit 3-pointers, and Jahmeir Springfield is the floor general that ties it all together.

“Everybody’s chemistry is above the roof,” Springfield said. “That’s the one thing about us: We do have chemistry. We really love each other.”

Those bonds were strengthened through stormy times. But with the eternal optimism of youth, the core group that contributed last year escaped with their confidence nearly unscathed. McFadden, an assistant at Upper Darby and most recently at Marple Newtown, gave them a new lease on their high school careers. Changes to culture and discipline were instituted, and the talent concealed by those losses started to crystalize.

The seed that started that process was a win or two that helped the confidence bloom.

“On our first game, we kind of had a very tough draw,” Ischiropoulos said, referencing a stroke of luck by getting Academy Park in the opener on the Friday the Knights were missing three starters to a football playoff game. “I felt that once we won that game and then beat Interboro and we started out 2-0, I just felt that we could win games. So then once we started to play like Penncrest and Springfield and we beat them, we had confidence that we could win a lot of games.”

At no point, though, has Haven bought into its hype, certainly not under McFadden’s watch, who oversaw practice Tuesday sporting a t-shirt with the season motto, “back to basics.” Plenty of observers were waiting for the Panthers to plummet back to earth. That never happened as they churned out win after win.

“I definitely knew there were people who were going to doubt us,” senior forward Kyree Fuller said. “But that kind of is what motivates us to do better. When we’re in the locker room before games, we motivate each other by telling each other, this is what people think of us and this is what we have to prove to them. That’s really how we motivate ourselves.”

One potential hurdle presented itself when Fuller went down with a knee injury against Penncrest last month. With a tear in his articular cartilage, the original diagnosis was that Haven would have to finish the season sans its best wing defender.

Instead, Fuller solicited a second opinion that determined that he could continue if he was willing to play through pain. It’ll take a Synvisc shot to his knee and some careful monitoring from McFadden to know when he needs a break. But as Springfield said, having Fuller back, “just adds the cherry on top of the milkshake.” It’s also allowed for sophomore Ryan Morris to gain minutes and emerge as another shooting threat.

The Haven leaders anticipate that Friday’s environment will require some adjustment, especially against the Hatters, who made the postseason last year and had to travel in the first round to Chester.

But a little adversity would be nothing new. And for a group that for so long has had to gird itself from skepticism, whose past results set long odds for a turnaround that they’ve summarily defied, the postseason is another challenge they’re eager to tackle.

“For me, I always knew that we could do this,” Springfield said. “And my belief was always there because I’m a die-hard. I play with passion every day, and so does my team. We said we wanted to come out here, and we made it happen.”