Red-hot Ridley ready for North Penn in opener

On paper, the math seems simple.

Ridley has won 11 games in a row on the way to the Central League regular-season and tournament championships. North Penn has won 11 games all season and narrowly snuck into the playoffs.

So when the No. 4 and No. 29 seeds collide Friday night in the first round of the District One Class AAAA Tournament, the script seems clear-cut. But the added wrinkle comes with Knights’ hot form.

North Penn has won five of seven, resuscitating a season that stood at six wins as Ridley was climbing into the teens. It took a victory over Hatboro-Horsham last time out, powered by 10 3-pointers, to get the Knights sufficient bonus points to make the field. Somehow – and the logic escapes me – North Penn finished sixth in an eight-team Suburban One Continental (that’s a division, not a conference), yet still made the playoffs. (Paging, Chichester.)

The Knights can shoot and have a handful of guards, like Matt Pickford, J.J. Melchior and Reece Udinski who can score. They have some height with 6-foot-6 Derek Heiserman and 6-foot-4 Ricky Johns.

But they face a tremendous team in Ridley. The Green Raiders’ only loss came to the team a seed ahead of them, Downingtown West, in the second half of a back-to-back. They’ve won 10 games over districts foes, including three in a row. They manhandled Conestoga, the 14 seed, by a 62-38 margin in the Central League title game Monday.

Ridley is a team that, in the words of coach Mike Snyder, consistently makes “really good basketball plays.” Sounds like coachspeak, but consider the ways they can break teams down.

Brett Foster is excellent taking the ball to the hole, and few teams have a defender who can stay in front of him. They can shoot over zones. They have excellent ball movement, keyed by the tremendous passing of Julian Wing, that gets them out of trouble in many possessions. Wing, Ryan Bollinger and Liam Thompson can score in the mid-range game. Kylon Hicks, Jimmy Bramwell and Mike Patterson rarely create their own shots, but as the beneficiary of setups by Foster and Wing, they can finish around the rim.

There’s one very underrated aspect to what Ridley can do: Team defense. Which leads me to …

Ridley’s key to victory: Get to 50 points. Ridley has allowed an average of 40.3 points per game. They have allowed just two teams to hit 50 points – Downingtown West and Chichester, a 76-60 win. North Penn has been all over the place, scoring over 65 points four times (though three of those were in December). If Ridley can force bad jump shots like with Conestoga Monday, that bodes well.