Abington gets defensive to grind out win over Perkiomen Valley in District 1-6A quarters
ABINGTON >> It wasn’t the type of game Abington wanted to play, but the Ghosts weren’t going to let that keep them from Temple.
The top seed and two-time defending District 1-6A boys basketball champion found itself unable to speed up a patient and disciplined Perkiomen Valley team in the quarterfinals on Friday. PV played the game at its preferred pace and limited Eric Dixon as well as anyone has all year.
But, the Ghosts feel like they’ve seen everything this year and their playoff defense has been really good.
Abington locked down the Vikings, taking out the No. 8 seed in a 53-37 win, booking a trip to the Liacouras Center for the third straight season.
“We tried to get it in the 70s, but they do a good job, man,” Abington coach Charles Grasty said. “That’s a tough team to play against, to coach against. They’re just well-coached, they know what they can do and he does a great job, he gets everything out of those guys.”
With the way both teams shot the ball to start the game, it looked like it could have gotten into higher digits. Abington and PV traded bucket after bucket and the Ghosts had a 15-14 lead after eight minutes.
The Vikings knew they weren’t going to be able to matchup with Dixon or Lucas Monroe straight up, but they still did a terrific job themselves defensively. Dixon, the Villanova-bound forward, had his touches limited and faced nearly constant double or triple teams while the Vikings tried to cut off Penn-bound Monroe’s driving lanes.
Perk Valley (19-8) couldn’t have asked for much more, the Vikings just needed to make more shots.
“Defensively, we did a lot of things really well keying in on Monroe and especially with the job we did on Dixon,” PV coach Mike Poysden said. “Walking into halftime (down) 23-21, we have to be excited about that, that’s our approach and the score we were hoping to be close to.”
Abington’s defense would be the difference in the second half. Poysden felt his team was able to get the looks it wanted against the Ghosts in man-to-man and the 2-3 zone, but in the third quarter, Abington mixed things up.
“They came out in a 1-3-1 that nowhere else on film had we really seen them run,” Poysden said. “They caught us a little off guard with the 1-3-1 and the way (Darius) Brown plays, the way Monroe plays and with Dixon in the middle, we couldn’t really settle in to get the shots we were comfortable with taking. We struggled to score.”
The real difference-maker for Abington (25-1) in that zone is junior Manir Waller. The only underclassmen in the team’s rotation, Waller wasn’t able to jump in a find a role right away in his first season on varsity.
Dixon noted as the JV team’s top guy last year, Waller was used to “getting buckets” and being the man, where on a veteran and established varsity roster, he would be a supporting piece. To Waller’s credit, Dixon said the athletic wing always listened and worked hard to round out his game and it’s starting to show.
“He’s getting better and better with every game,” Dixon said. “He has all the physical tools, you can see it. It was the mental side with him and he’s come a long way.
“He’s very competitive, he oozes the talent all Lucas and I had to do was tell him to let the game come to him and he’d play much, much better.”
Waller was a menace defensively, flying around to whichever Vikings player had the ball and denying PV a lot of the looks it can usually generate through its offense. It meant some long possessions, with the Ghosts playing defense for 45 seconds or more several times, but rarely did they seem to miss a rotation or have a lapse.
The junior, who had three steals, also scored eight points, with six coming in the second half as a result of his defense.
“Coach told me to be aggressive in that zone once again, so I tried to be long, wanted to be aggressive as always and try not to give them shots they know they could hit,” Waller said. “We went over it in practice, we knew it was their type of playing style. We stayed patient, rotated and just stayed solid throughout the whole defensive possession.”
Poysden credited Abington’s adjustment and noted a couple of walks in the second half that were uncharacteristic of his team as part of the Ghosts’ frantic defense. With the Vikings dropping into the seeding brackets, Poysden said there was still plenty to like from his team’s last two games and his guys will look to head into states on a winning streak.
On the same page, Grasty had plenty of props for the Vikings and how hard they made his team work to get through the quarterfinal round.
“You look around at the matchups and think we can dump it down to Dixon, or Lucas can get to the basket and Darius can knock down threes but they did a good job on all our guys,” Grasty said. “They made us work for it and it wasn’t easy, but there’s eight teams left playing for a district championship and they weren’t here on accident.”
Dixon finished with 17 points despite attempting just six shots in the game. The senior said he told himself to stay patient and not rush his shots and he felt he was able to seal the PV defenders behind him, which allowed him to make all five shots he took inside the arc.
Abington will face No. 4 Pennridge in the semifinals, the third meeting between the teams this winter. For many of the Ghosts, it’ll be their third straight year playing at least one game on Temple’s floor.
It’s still not an opportunity they take for granted and for the new guys, like Waller, it’s something they get to relish for the first time.
“Anytime you play in an atmosphere like this, I still get goosebumps,” Waller said of Friday’s packed gym. “Going down there, we remember to have fun, but we’re there to take care of business.”
Abington 53, Perkiomen Valley 37
ABINGTON 15 8 11 19 – 53
PERKIOMEN VALLEY 14 7 5 9 – 37
A: Manir Waller 4 0-0 8, Darius Brown 2 2-2 7, Maurice Henry 3 0-0 8, Lucas Monroe 3 3-5 10, Eric Dixon 5 7-8 17, Jack Moynihan 1 0-0 3. Totals: 17 12-15 53.
PV: Kameron Parks 2 0-0 4, AJ Hansen 1 0-0 2, Tyler Stretchay 6 2-2 17, Ian Streeper 1 1-2 3, Zach Krause 3 0-0 9, Bryce Streeper 1 0-0 2. Totals: 14 3-4 37.
3-pointers: A – Henry 2, Brown, Monroe; PV – Stretchay 3, Krause 3.
