Harkins hoping to maintain hot hand for Delco Christian
NEWTOWN SQUARE >> Wyatt Harkins’ historic Friday night traced its roots to 10 days earlier.
The do-everything Delco Christian guard was still stewing, in a channeled and productive way, over how his last game ended. It was the the first round of the Bicentennial League playoffs Feb. 9, and Harkins missed the front-end of a 1-and-1 in the final minute that could’ve sent the Knights to overtime against Bristol.
Instead, DC crashed out, 66-64, waiting more than a week to further its quest to return to the PIAA Class A tournament.
When that arrived, Harkins put the intervening week of practice-court atonement to good use, scoring 40 points — including a 20-for-20 day from the line — in an 83-49 thumping of No. 3 seed Calvary Baptist in the District One quarterfinals.
The win allows the sixth-seeded Knights (13-11) to play for a states berth Tuesday night against No. 2 Faith Christian (Cheltenham H.S., 6).
The fact that Harkins’ journey to such a momentous output was so rocky fits tidily within the travails Delco Christian has endured this season. And so it will be again Tuesday, with second- and third-leading scorers Devin Hill and Grant Fischer sidelined for off-court reasons.
Harkins is one of two Knights to play in every game this year. He’s averaging 20.0 points per, and his 481 points, including his 1,000th career, ranks fourth in Delco. Yet for all that success, Harkins was still willing to internalize and repurpose the disappointment of the Bristol loss for the team’s betterment.
“The whole week, we had a lot of energy in practice,” Harkins said. “I felt good. My shot felt good. A lot of the guys were moving the ball well, so coming into the game, we had a lot of confidence even though we were down.”
Even Friday, the road to history wasn’t straightforward. Harkins’ first shot was an airball. He had another blocked. And his response was to continue battling.
“I think you just have to understand that if we’re taking it into the lane hard, aggressively, attack their body, even if you miss the shot, the ref’s going to give you the foul,” Harkins said with the cadence of a coach. “And even if the ref doesn’t give it to you once or twice, if you just keep attacking, keep attacking, keep attacking under control, eventually they have to call it for you.”
Harkins’ charity-stripe perfection wasn’t the product of a transformative week. He entered Friday among the county leaders at 82.4 percent from the line, but his irrepressible desire to get to the line even surprised him when the final stats were tabulated. (Given the wide margin of victory and how early the starters made way for the JV, those trips weren’t inflated by late-game hacking, either.)
Comparisons and figures are unreliable for DC this season. Its thrashing of the No. 3 seed indicates the inadequacy of its ranking to encapsulate its true potential, just as last year it won a district title as the fourth seed. The 47-37 loss to Faith Christian on Dec. 15 — a game played without Fischer plus healthy-again T.J. Tann and Jordan Parks — also carries limited predictive weight.
Harkins, who has fielded interest from Division II Lock Haven University and Division III John Jay College, readily admits that his senior season hasn’t entailed the smooth sailing he’d hoped for on the heels of last year’s run to the PIAA Class A quarterfinals.
But the last two weeks represent a microcosm of the hard work he’s espoused as one of the Knights’ most vocal leaders. And with (at least) one more test to prove how well those lessons have been instilled, Harkins is eager for the latest in a long line of challenges.
“You’ve got to just band together, come together as a brotherhood again,” he said. “It’s been tough for us. We know that Tuesday very well could be the last game playing together as a group, and no one on this team wants that to be the last time we go out.
“We expect to be back in the district championship. We expect to win it again this year, so I think it’s just going to be that extra sense of urgency, getting on the floor, taking charges, anything like that.”
