Abington turns up the tempo, rallies past Plymouth Whitemarsh

ABINGTON >> Abington wanted to speed the game up in the second half after scoring just 15 points in the opening 16 minutes against Plymouth Whitemarsh.

The tempo resulted in the Ghosts turning a five-point halftime deficit into a four-point lead after three quarters.

Abington kept it going in the fourth quarter and made enough plays down the stretch to beat Plymouth Whitemarsh, 47-40, in Suburban One League American Conference action Friday night at Abington Senior High School.

“In the second half we put some pressure on them,” Abington coach Charles Grasty said. “I thought we were able to speed them up a little bit, make them uncomfortable. They were throwing the ball in spots that we don’t think they were too comfortable. We thought defensively in the second half our energy was a lot better.”

The game-changing play was a result of the Ghosts faster attack in the third quarter.

Trailing by two, the Ghosts forced a turnover and Lucas Monroe tied the game by finishing an alley oop with a two-hand slam over a Colonials defender to tie the game at 26.

“A focal points for us going into the second half was speeding them up,” Monroe said. “I don’t think they wanted to run with us and they were slowing the ball down, walking it up, so we wanted to pressure them a little bit, get the crowd into it and get some fastbreak layups and stuff. We also focus on outlet passes. I threw it up to Maurice (Henry) and he threw a great pass and I finished it. It got the crowd excited and we went on a run after.”

Abington’s Darrius Brown drew a charge on the ensuing PW possession and — after a Colonials timeout — Henry made a layup to give the Ghosts their first lead since the first quarter, 28-26, in the final minute of the third quarter.

Monroe finished the third with a pair of free throws with less than five seconds on the clock to give his side a 30-26 lead heading to the final quarter.

The Colonials didn’t go away in the fourth. Caelin Peters and Ray Tomassetti sandwiched threes around an Abington basket with less than four minutes left to trim a 36-28 deficit to 38-34.

But the Ghosts had an answer.

Henry hit a corner three — only Abington’s second triple of the game and first attempted after halftime — to get the lead to nine, 43-34, with 2:25 to go.

Peters hit another three in the final minute and Mark Kalala grabbed a steal before going 1-for-2 from the free throw line to get the Colonials within three, 43-40, with 31.7 seconds left.

Then, Monroe sealed it. After playing keepaway for 10 seconds, the Penn commit went to the basket, made the layup and was fouled. He sunk the free throw to make it 46-40 with 18 seconds remaining and Abington was celebrating a win over its league rival.

“PW and Abington is always a fun game,” Monroe said. “Sadly we only get to play them once a year usually. Now we get them at least twice. I think it’s good for both communities. It’s fun. They don’t like us. We don’t like them. It’s always a fun matchup, always a fun game. We’re excited to get to play them again.”

“We’re a team right now that’s just good enough to lose big games,” PW coach Jim Donofrio said. “That’s either going to stay that way the whole year or these guys are going to show what they’re made of in terms of focus and raising everything — the concentration, the focus. I don’t know if they have an angry bone in them. That’s the challenge on them now.

“You can see that they can implement a defensive gameplan for a while … they’ve got heart, but right now the basketball IQ is nonexistent and the ability to be poised under pressure as a collective team is nonexistent. That’s from basically a combination of we don’t play an easy schedule … and these guys have a lot thrown on them. And they’re not ready for it. It gets compounded by not a ton of minutes experience.”

Abington’s Eric Dixon was held to single digits for the first time in his career. The senior Villanova commit finished with nine points and six rebounds.

“Our guys know how to play basketball,” Grasty said. “Our other guys can play and they had a chance to do what they could do tonight. I thought Maurice Henry played spectacular tonight — hit a couple big shots, had a couple big steals, defensively we put him on their point guard Peters and just asked him to hound him and he did exactly what we asked him to do. He hit a step-back three to extend our lead.”

Brown led the Ghosts in scoring with 13 points, Henry had 12 and Monroe 11.

The Colonials struggled offensively throughout the game, even while leading throughout most of the first two-and-a-half quarters. They turned the ball over 18 times and never appeared to get into a rhythm.

Peters led PW with 16 points.

Naheem McLeod, a senior Florida State commit, finished with six points.

“Defensively we’re very good,” Monroe said. “We’re not exceptionally big, but we play hard. We have a lot of guys that are athletic and fast. We take advantage of that. They were throwing it down to Naheem a lot and our guards were doing a good job of contesting the passes, getting over the passer and even getting steals even though they were throwing it up high.”

Abington improves to 8-1 this season and sits in first place with a 4-0 SOL American record.

Plymouth Whitemarsh falls to 5-4 overall and 2-2 in league play. The Colonials went undefeated in the regular season last year and hadn’t lost an SOL American game since January 2015. They now have two league losses in the last two weeks.

“Hopefully this becomes a laugh-last scenario,” Donofrio said. “Hopefully it’s he who laughs last laughs hardest. That’s our goal. That’s the challenge we have on ourselves right now. We’ll see if we can pull that off. I’m not sure.

“Can you make nice guys tough? I don’t know. We’re trying. Maybe the record they have now, which we have to live with, will wake us up. You’re going to go down as a rebuilding team in PW history if that’s what you want. Or you’re going to go down with a team that you’re going to say we learned a lot, we took our hits, but man it was fun at the end when we learned from all that. Right now that’s our challenge.”