Loss will leave Chester with something to prove

PHILADELPHIA >> When the dust settled at Temple University’s Liacouras Center Saturday afternoon, the granular aspects of a Chester season that just ended at the hands of Reading obscured the Clippers’ underlying realities.
To get to the PIAA quarterfinals is a monumental achievement. Just ask the 4,000 or so Reading fans who trekked to North Broad St. to boisterously fete their Red Knights’ 73-64 victory. For Chester to return within three wins of a state title after a barely-.500 season is the kind of accomplishment a coach lists as the first bullet point on his resume.
The mind-boggling stats that swirl around the Clippers — that Saturday was the program’s 31st state quarterfinal, that it hadn’t lost in one since 1999, a run of 11 straight wins in a do-or-die game that had gradually lost that second option — hardly dampen that.
But walking off the court for the final time, the Clippers had plenty to lament. For a program that catalogues its history like few others, the final summation of the 2015-16 bunch defies tidy categorization.
Everything seems to be couched in qualifiers. Chester had a great season … for a team that was 14-11 last year and started 2-5 this season. Chester really hit its stride … though the loss to Plymouth Whitemarsh in the District One final and Saturday’s setback, both at Liacouras, temper that praise.
Chester all-time squads fall into several classifications. Some were defined by a star player, a Jameer Nelson or a Zain Shaw. Some were team-centric through and through, one that made you marvel at how a workmanlike assembly of no-names obliterated competition and created a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts.
Larry Yarbray’s squad falls somewhere in the margins, and it bows out of states with the impression that the roster’s full talent was never fully mobilized.
Take Saturday’s affair. The clear consensus was that Reading’s Lonnie Walker was the best player on the court, an assertion supported by the 30 points and six assists for the highly-touted junior guard.
But for Chester to prevail, the next four or five best performances had to come from Clippers. With a half-dozen players ticketed for or drawing Division I interest, that proposition wasn’t outlandish.
Instead, as Reading’s lead grew, those individuals increasingly dissociated from the collective mindset, pressing too much and embarking on too many individual sorties in the lane or hoisting too many 3-pointers without success.
“I told them, we’ve been down 20 points at halftime in a game, against Martin Luther King, came back and won the game,” Yarbray said. “When we did that, we played together, we played the right way. We didn’t become individuals. Part of that third quarter going into the fourth, we were still (playing like) individuals. Then we finally got smacked in the face. In the fourth quarter, they wanted to play together, but there wasn’t enough time on the clock.”
Yarbray will never complain of having too much offensive talent. But too seldom this year did all his horses pull in the same direction. Part of the blame goes to injuries, with junior forward Jordan Camper and senior Delaware State commit Marquis Collins disrupting the rhythm with their absences. But it’s hard to reconcile the fact that the Clippers (22-8) played their best basketball without those two, then didn’t sustain a boost when they returned.
So here again come the campaign’s qualifiers: Junior forward Jamar Sudan was either excellent or invisible offensively, though consistent defensively when foul trouble allowed. Stanley Davis, headed for Morgan State, uncorked drives that were either reckless or strokes of genius. Collins never seemed right after the injury. Camper’s lack of defensive grit often relegated him to the bench.
“With all the talent we’ve got, we still try to balance it out,” said point guard Khaleeq Campbell, Saturday’s leading scorer with 22 points. “It doesn’t seem to work to our advantage because the individuality comes into play, and we end up losing.”
Those shortcomings didn’t stem from a lack of workers, as many of Yarbray’s 12-player rotation took care of that. But all this time wondering who would step up on offense undercut Chester’s emphasis on defense, usually a cornerstone.
Reading seemed immune to Chester’s full-court pressure defense, so often a great equalizer of talent. And while Chester searched possession after possession for someone to take control offensively, Red Knights dove on the floor after loose balls and caused turnovers. Khary Mauras’ line of 17 points, 12 rebounds, five steals and five assists is exactly the kind of do-everything performance Chester lacked.
“The offense really doesn’t matter,” Campbell said. “The thing we missed out on a lot of games was the defense. We couldn’t stop them if we pressed them or played full-court man, and we couldn’t get the stops we needed. … This year was kind of an offense-first team to get in the flow.”
This year’s Clippers surrendered 53.9 points per game, a respectable tally. But under the bright lights Saturday (and in conceding 68 points to PW in the district final), the lack of defensive wherewithal may be the most prominent tag affixed to these Clippers’ legacy.
“It’s been a wonderful journey,” teary-eyed senior Maurice Henry said. “We had a great season. It hurts for a day like this. But nobody believed we could make it this far after being 2-5.”
By the standards of just about any program, Henry’s conclusion is unimpeachable. In absolute terms, Chester has a great deal to be proud of this year.
But any ambitions of joining the program’s class of all-time greats have ended unfulfilled.