Shanahan may be the team to challenge Downingtown East for C-M National crown
The race to determine the Ches-Mont National girls’ basketball title may wind up being a forgone conclusion, with defending champion Downingtown East considered the heavy favorite. But if anybody can challenge the Cougars’ dominance, it’s probably going to have to come from Bishop Shanahan.
The Eagles are off to a nice start and they have a new, but tested, head coach in Jim Powers, who came over in the offseason from West Chester Rustin. And led by 6-foot-2 Katherine Greenhut, Shanahan has the frontcourt size to at least challenge East’s dominant 6-5 center Bella Smuda.
“We’ll have a handle on where we are in the next week,” Powers predicted. “At the end of that stretch, we’ll have a pretty good idea where the (Ches-Mont) National side is going because everybody will have played everybody.”
We will learn quite a bit on Thursday, when the 3-0 Cougars (6-4 overall) host the 3-0 Eagles (7-2 overall) in the first of two regular season meetings. A Shanahan win is unlikely, but can the Eagles hang with East, look to improve and take another shot at home on Feb. 4th?
“We have some talented kids and some with little varsity experience who are starting to come around,” Powers said. “But I still think we are a work in progress.”
Downingtown East has four starters back from a team that topped Rustin to win the overall conference title last winter. Smuda averaged 20 points, 12 rebounds and six blocks a game a year ago, has already signed with Division I Liberty, and has experienced starters Mary McFillin, Caroline Brennan and Lauren Kent in the backcourt. A sophomore, Kent is averaging 12 points per game so far.
“Bella is clearly a great player but what’s overlooked is that she doesn’t bring the ball up the floor,” Schurtz pointed out. “Our guards have to do the work to give her the opportunity to find success in the half-court.
“We are comfortable with our top seven players. We’ve had five different players go for double figures in scoring in various games, so we’ve have a nice balance. The key for us is consistency and confidence.”
Schurtz’s squad has already survived road trips to West Chester East (2-2, 7-3) and Henderson (2-1, 5-5), who are going to be big upcoming hurdles for Shanahan. In fact, the Eagles travel to West Chester East on Tuesday.
“Our first order of business is to deal with West Chester East (on Tuesday),” Powers acknowledged. “They are playing pretty well. That is not a given.”
Looking back over the course of the last nine months, Powers’ move to Shanahan after four years at the helm at Rustin makes a lot of sense.
“I just had to move on from Rustin, let’s put it that way,” Powers said.
“Both my kids attended Shanahan, my wife (Terri) graduated from there. It’s been in the family and the idea was always kind of intriguing.”
Powers’ eldest daughter Brooke played soccer for the Eagles, and younger daughter Jamie was the point guard in 2015 when Shanahan won its first of three Ches-Mont crowns under coach Fran Burbridge, who left in 2017 and is now the head coach at Westtown.
Jamie is now an assistant coach on her father’s coaching staff.
“You put all of it together and it was like ‘oh, OK,’” Powers said.
“It’s an interesting opportunity because (Shanahan) can draw kids from multiple schools, but it also looks like a nice challenge. The last few years they weren’t as competitive as, maybe, they could have been. Who knows? There was an opening and it seemed like the time to make a change.”
He inherited a team that lost Sammie McCarter to graduation, and promising sophomore, Maggie Grant, transferred to Archbishop Carroll. But the Eagles have proven commodities in seniors Greenhut and guard Giana DiMarco. Junior post player Shannon Donahue, and junior guards Jacey Petruno and Cara Wankmiller, round out the starting unit.
“Right now we are leaning on DiMarco and Greenhut,” Powers said. “The others are starting to settle in and understand what I am asking from them. They seem to get better and better.”
As for the Cougars, they are just 11th in the current District 1 5A power rankings, but they opened with one of the toughest non-league schedules in the region. East’s four losses have come against teams with a combined record of 31-3, including defending state 3A champs from Delone Catholic and 2018 4A champion Lancaster Catholic.
“Plymouth Whitemarsh, Lancaster Catholic and Delone Catholic are all ranked in the top-20 in the state,” Schurtz said. “And Gettysburg was a state tournament team that returned everybody.
“We are just trying to find a style of play that can compete at the highest level. We’ve shown some good signs, but we haven’t quite put our finger on it yet.
“We are going to have to deal with the emotional and mental side of playing such a tough schedule. You hope the girls react in a positive way, and our job as a staff is to help them learn from their mistakes and not be crippled by the losses. You have to have the resiliency to bounce back from them.”
Schurtz isn’t naïve about his team’s frontrunner status, but he expects Shanahan, West Chester Henderson and West Chester East to all be in the mix for the division championship. And even after we reach the halfway point of the regular season next week, he cautions against making any far-reaching assumptions.
“You get a sense at the halfway post where everyone sits, but two years ago we were in fourth place at the turn and were able to get back into the top two,” he said.
“Our half of the conference is notoriously difficult. In my time, only Henderson (in 2017-18) has been able to run the table without a loss and that was their magical season with a special group of kids.”
