Roman Catholic’s furious comeback tops Abington

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WARMINSTER >> The names are different, but the standards are the same at Roman Catholic.

So it shouldn’t have been too surprising to see the Cahillites, trailing by 11 with three and a half minutes left in the third quarter against Abington, mounting an inspired comeback. But for this group, under a first-year head coach and trying to forge its own identity, it was a chance to show what they were made of.

So Roman rallied back and claimed a hard-earned74-66 over a very good Galloping Ghosts squad at Archbishop Wood’s Coaches vs Cancer showcase Saturday.

“That’s Roman basketball,” Cahillites coach Matt Griffin said. “We’re trying to play for 32 minutes. Our guys are resilient, they play with high character, they never quit and made the winning plays at the end of the game. I’m very proud of them.”

It’s not the team that won back-to-back state titles, with the big three of that group all at Penn State and some other guys having transferred elsewhere. But there’s a lot of pride in this Roman team and they still have high expectations of themselves.

Abington, wrapping up a ringer of a week, looked dominant early. Sophomore big man Eric Dixon was scoring at will in the post in the first quarter and even into the second with Robbie Heath playing a strong second fiddle. Roman, on the other hand, found itself down 11 after one and 12 with 2:29 left before the half.

Then, Roman (3-0) got on a run, scoring 10 straight to close the second quarter, the last on a driving bucket by Allen Betrand with just 1.8 left on the clock. Sparked and firmly back in the game, Roman retreated to its locker room with momentum and a chance to make some adjustments.

“We started playing as a team,” Betrand said. “Everybody started buying in. We needed to win. JP (Sanders) stepped up big, Seth Lundy, Da’kQuan Davis stepped up, Lynn (Greer III), everybody.”

Abington coach Charles Grasty said he didn’t see any tired legs out of his team despite it being their fourth game in five days. Roman was ferocious on the glass, especially late in the game and came up with some key offensive rebounds during the comeback that ended up hurting Abington.

The Ghosts  (4-2, 1-0 Suburban One League National) were playing in a zone, which can make rebounding tough, especially when the other team is taking long jumpers and thusly getting long bounces off missed shots.

“We wanted to make them take tough shots and we did,” Grasty said. “We just weren’t able to squeeze those rebounds and that hurt us.”

After the break, Roman made one key defensive change and it was focused on slowing down Dixon.

“We put JP Sanders, who is our best defender, on him,” Griffin said. “He’s at a height disadvantage but JP plays with a tremendous amount of heart and he did his best to front the post as possible and make it harder for Dixon to get the ball. Even though Dixon is a phenomenal player and had a phenomenal game, we were able to slow him down enough with that defensive adjustment.”

After the game, Sanders was walking like he has just gotten out of a fight, but every guy that passed him in the hallway had a slap on the shoulder and words of encouragement for his work. With him working hard on defense, it let his teammates go to work on the other end.

Heath scored four in a row to put Abington ahead 50-39 with 3:25 left in the third. Then Roman ripped off another 10-0 run that spanned into the fourth quarter and made it a one-point game until Dixon hit a 3-pointer from the right corner with 7:28 to go.

Roman took its first lead of the second half on a trey by Chris Kuhar with 6:25 left and the teams traded leads before Abington’s Eric Dougherty tied it 58-58 on a triple with 4:56 to play.

“We played four really tough teams, it’s not like we were playing any cupcakes,” Grasty said. “We came out 2-2 and we’ll see where we can go from there.”

Betrand put Roman ahead for good with a 3-pointer he canned with 51 seconds left, giving the Cahillites a 68-66 advantage. Roman forced Abington into a turnover, then Greer finished a traditional three-point play and after Abington missed a 3, Lundy iced it at the foul line.

With seven points in the fourth, Betrand showed he’s definitely a guy Roman will be looking to all season in crunch time.

“Allen’s one of those kids who keeps getting better every day,” Griffin said. “He’s got a winner’s mentality. He plays aggressive and hard, he gives you everything he has every single day. He came up with some big time plays for us, he’s just a tremendous kid and we’re going to continue to look to him.”

Heath gamely battled through a banged up right hand and wrist after he was fouled on a third quarter dunk attempt. Grasty said he didn’t think it would be too serious and the junior guard should be ok to play in their next game, Tuesday at Neshaminy.

Roman will be in more wars before the season is up, but what it did Saturday could be one of those identity defining moments that pays dividends later down the line.

“We just out-toughed them,” Betrand said. “It’s what we do. I think this made us come together more, we struggled at first but we learned we need to play together to win at this game.”

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Andrew Robinson

Andrew Robinson
Montgomery Media/Lansdale Reporter sports writer.

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