Powell, La Salle rally past Bonner & Prendergast to stay undefeated

SPRINGFIELD >> A comeback does not start with the first points. It begins with the belief it can happen.

And despite down 14 points at halftime to Bonner & Prendergast Thursday night, Allen Powell said the La Salle boys basketball’s confidence they could erase the deficit never wavered.

 “We were talking as a team before the coaches came in, telling us that we can fight back,” the Explorers senior guard said. “We had a slow half. Come out the second half and just play better.”

With better defensive play and an offensive ignited by Powell, the Explorers sliced the Friars’ lead down to three by the end of the third quarter. A 9-0 run to begin the fourth put La Salle up six and the Explorers held off Bonner’s late rally try to stay perfect on the season with a 64-59 Philadelphia Catholic League victory.

“No matter what you’re doing you got to believe you can comeback,” La Salle coach Mike McKee said. “Our guys showed a lot of character and demonstrated that. Got to give them a lot of credit, you kind of say words but for them to back it up means a lot more.”

 

Powell finished with a game-high 23 points — 10 coming in the third quarter while in the fourth the last of his five 3-pointers gave the Explorers (17-0, 10-0 PCL) the lead for good. Konrad Kiszka added 14 points, scoring 10 after halftime.

“I knew I had to step up more,” Powell said. “We were down by 14 so I knew we had to get a couple points on the board. I didn’t force it though, I just took the open shot that was there and it was falling.”

Bonner & Prendergast’s Isaiah Wong, a Miami (Fla.) commit, paced the Friars with 13 points — eight in the fourth — despite picking up two fouls in the game’s first 3:06 and sitting on the bench until the start of the second half.

“It threw me off a little bit but it’s just at the third and fourth quarter I was trying to get my rhythm back,” Wong said. “Trying to shoot a couple shots at halftime. I felt like I had rhythm but some layups wasn’t going in.”

Chris Haynes scored all 11 of his points in the first half for the Friars (13-2, 7-2), hitting three of Bonner’s six first-quarter 3-pointers. The Friars connected just once from beyond the arc the rest after the opening eight minutes.

La Salle started the third with seven straight points — five from Jake Timby — to cut Bonner’s 38-24 halftime lead quickly down to 38-31. The Friars pushed the advantage back up to double digits after a Tariq Ingraham dunk made it 42-31, but the Explorers ended the third on an 11-3 run, eight points provided by Powell.

Powell hit a pair of 3-pointers during the run then scored on a coast-to-coast layup to pull the Explorers with 43-42. Wong drove and found Donovan Rodriguez inside just before the buzzer to make it 45-42 entering the fourth.

“We didn’t really talk that much on defense in the third quarter,” Wong said. “I feel like we were just over-hyped in the first half and we just tried to keep the same thing going but it didn’t work out. They hit like a lot of threes in which we wasn’t ready for and they came back in the third quarter.”

After a Kiszka basket, Powell buried a corner three to put La Salle up — its first lead since 4-3 in the first quarter — while consecutive baskets from Zach Crisler extended the advantage to 51-45.

A Wong 3-pointer and two inside from Ingraham had the Friars within one at 51-50. But Kiszka drove and kicked out to Kahlil Diarrah in the corner for a 3-pointer. Kiszka’s breakaway basket had the Explorers back ahead by six.

The Friars cut the deficit to two twice late in the fourth — the second time at 59-57 after a Wong drive with 1:02 left. Bonner had a chance to tie after the Explorers missed the second of a one-and-one made it 60-57 with 48.5 seconds. However, the Friars could not get off a shot and the possession ended on a half-court violation after a loose-ball scramble.

In the final 20 seconds, both Kiszka and Powell hit a pair at the foul line to seal the Explorers’ win.

“Team defense, good shots. You know, aside from believing the other thing is you got to realize it’s not going to happen at once,” McKee said. “You got to possession by possession — it becomes a grinder which we normally do which we really didn’t do in the first half so we really just had to get back to being ourselves. We certainly had a big hole to get out of.”

La Salle, which reached double-digit victories in Catholic League play for the first time since the 2010-2011, looks to keep its unbeaten record intact when it visits Archbishop Carroll 7 p.m. Monday.

“We just being humble, going into every game playing hard,” Powell said. “We don’t get caught up in what everyone else wants, of course everyone wants us to lose. We’re a good team, of course people want to hate but just stay calm and just do what we do.”

Bonner & Prendergast, which had its three-game win streak snapped, is also back on the court Monday hosting Cardinal O’Hara at 7 p.m.

“This is the type of game we let slip away and I feel like we needed this game because all these games are just getting us ready for the PCL playoff and stuff,” Wong said. “Last year we only lost one (PCL) game and it was to this team again but I felt like that one loss we really didn’t get as much (of) a learning (experience) but this year we’re going through losses this year, slipping up and it feel like those slips up going to make us better.”

Bonner’s 3-point shooting helped build its early advantage with the Friars leading by six twice in the opening quarter, the second time at 21-15. Baskets by Powell and Crisler cut the margin to 21-19 before Mike Perretta gave the visitors a 24-19 edge as he faded to his right and drained a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the wing.

“We played bad defense in the first half,” Powell said. They were getting open threes and they were knocking them down, they had a great-shooting first half. Defense definitely helped us in the second half.”

Powell began the second quarter with a 3-pointer to get the Explorers within 24-22 but La Salle scored only two more points the rest of the half.

After six straight Bonner points, a Diarrah basket made it 30-24 before a Ingraham putback and two Rodriguez free throws had the Friars ahead 34-24 at 2:26.

“That was part my fault,” McKee said. “I tried to do too many things on defense rather than just sitting down and guarding and playing man-to-man defense.”

A putback by Haynes and two James Welde foul shots with 25.2 seconds left gave Bonner the 38-24 advantage at halftime.

La Salle 64, Bonner & Prendergast 59
Bonner & Prendergast   21 14   7 14 — 59
La Salle 19   5 18 22 — 64
Bonner & Prendergast: Isaiah Wong 5 1-1 13; Chris Haynes 4 0-0 11; Tariq Ingraham 4 1-2 9; Mike Perretta 2 2-2 8; Tyreese Watson 3 2-2 8; Malik Edwards 2 0-0 4; Donovan Rodriguez 1 2-2 4; James Welde 0 2-2 2; Totals 21 10-11 59.
La Salle: Allen Powell 8 2-2 23; Konrad Kiszka 4 6-8 14; Zach Crisler 4 0-0 8; Kahlil Diarrah 3 1-2 8; Titus Beard 1 3-4 6; Jake Timby 2 0-0 5; Totals 22 12-16 64.
Three-pointers: BP-Haynes 3, Perretta 2, Wong 2; L-Powell 5, Beard, Diarrah, Timby.