WEST CHESTER >> Unionville senior JT Anderson remembers playing JV basketball as a freshman, talking to classmates Charlie Kammeier and Ryan Brown and imagining everything they’d accomplish when they got to 12th grade.
They’ve done a lot of good things this year and checked a giant box Thursday night.
The top-seeded Longhorns defeated No. 2 Upper Dublin, 63-36, in the District 1-5A championship game at West Chester University. It’s the program’s first district championship since 1981.
“It’s all coming true,” Anderson said of the goals he and his teammates set three years ago. “It’s kind of a dream.
“It’s been four years coming for us. The 6 a.m. workouts all throughout the summer for the past four years. It’s all just a culmination of everything coming together and us just playing our butts off at the end of the day. It’s a great feeling.”
“These dudes are going to be legends,” Unionville coach Chris Cowles said. “We said discipline creates legends. They became legendary because they won a district title for the first time since 1981. It’s a credit to them.”
Unionville (23-3) scored 18 straight points across the first and second quarters, turning a 10-8 deficit into a 26-10 lead, and never looked back. The advantage never dipped below double digits the rest of the way en route to a 27-point victory.
“Our defense and JT’s ability to break a press by himself and be able to go through the reads is high level,” Cowles credited for the game-changing run. “I think that’s why we had success offensively, because he’s able to make cross-court passes and go through the reads that a college guard would because he’s a college guard.”
Upper Dublin (24-4) was held to 17 points in the first half, making six fields and two foul shots across the first 16 minutes of play.
“(Unionville) packed it in, they were going to force us to shoot over them,” UD coach Derek Brooks said. “Unfortunately we did not have a shooting night that we needed and I thought we were a little rushed a lot on offense. They also executed really well defensively, keeping us in front, not letting us get in the lane and we didn’t have a good shooting night, either. Too many turnovers. Thirty-six points isn’t going to get it done against any team. Credit to them.”
Unionville’s lead was 17-10 at the end of the first quarter – capped by Anderson going end-to-end in six seconds to beat the buzzer with a runner – and 32-17 at the half. Anderson had 10 of his 12 points in the first half while Kammeier and Brown each had seven.
Upper Dublin had a chance to get back into the game in the third quarter, forcing four turnovers on the Longhorns’ first four possessions. The offense, however, wasn’t able to capitalize. The Cardinals forced nine turnovers in the quarter and held Unionville to seven points, but only scored three points themselves, falling into a 39-20 hole through three.
“I thought our defense forced a lot of turnovers (20),” Brooks said, “but we didn’t get any layups in transition. Most of the turnovers were out of bounds… If you’re not going to get anything easy in transition – it’s good to press and force turnovers – but hopefully you get an easy bucket. I think we just needed at some point to get a 6-0 run. We even started to get some layup attempts and it just rims out. Sometimes those nights happen.”
The outcome was never in doubt in the fourth quarter and Brown was a big reason why. The senior scored 14 of his game-high 24 points and hit three of his four three-pointers in the final frame.
“If he gets hot, no one can really stop him,” Anderson said. “If everyone is hot, I’m taking Ryan hot over anybody. He’s amazing. I love Ryan.”
Unionville senior Nick Diehl also delivered in the fourth, scoring six points and grabbing four rebounds. He finished with 12 points and 14 boards.
Ryan Mulroy led Upper Dublin with 11 points, 10 of which came in the fourth quarter. Idris Rines added eight and Kobe Bazemore had six.
Both teams will compete in the PIAA-5A playoffs, which start Friday March 8. Unionville will face District 3 eighth-place finisher, Manheim Central (19-7) while Upper Dublin takes on District 3 fifth-place finisher, Exeter Township (18-8).
“This hurts, our boys are going to be upset,” Brooks said, “but you have to have a short memory. You can’t let it carry over to states… These losses are tough, but you have to have as short of a memory as you can because you don’t want to let it carry over. There’s still plenty of hoops to play. There’s still season left.”
Unionville 63, Upper Dublin 36
Upper Dublin 10 7 3 16 – 36
Unionville 17 15 7 24 – 63
UD: Kobe Bazemore 3 0 0-3 6, Chris Kohlbrenner 1 0 1-2 3, Ryan Mulroy 5 0 1-2 11, Idris Rines 0 2 2-2 8, Brady Fogle 1 0 2-3 4, Noah Cohen 0 0 0-0 0, James Castronuovo 0 0 0-0 0, Anthony Oliveira-Schultze 0 0 0-0 0, Reilly McLaughlin 0 1 1-2 4. Total 10 3 7-11 36.
UN: Ryan Brown 3 4 6-7 24, JT Anderson 2 2 2-2 12, Charlie Kammeier 1 2 1-2 9, James Brenner 2 0 0-0 4, Nick Diehl 4 0 4-4 12, Jack Robbins 1 0 0-0 2, Jack Hyman 0 0 0-0 0. Total 13 8 13-15 63.
