NEWTOWN SQUARE — Kevin McCarthy’s introduction to high school basketball came with a splash from deep.
From his COVID-abbreviated freshman year, McCarthy’s niche at Episcopal Academy was first and foremost as a shooter. Leave him open behind the arc at your own peril, opposing teams would quickly learn.
Word would get around, as it always does, and that novelty would burn off. Yet McCarthy kept on making 3-pointers. And with that as the cornerstone, he would diversify his game, grow physically into a rangy 6-4 defender and become the kind of offensive facilitator that makes others around him better.
“Definitely the best asset of my game is my shooting ability,” McCarthy said. “When I was an underclassmen, I did a lot more solely 3-point shooting. As I matured, I developed my game and made my game better all around, and I play off my 3-pointer more now. So teams close out on me hard, they guard me really heavily. I use my 3-pointer to get to the basket, to get open diving lanes.”
Along the way, McCarthy collected 1,527 points, eighth-most in program history. He picked up three Division I offers before fulfilling his dream of going to West Point to play for Army.
And he makes history as the first Churchmen player to be named Daily Times Boys Basketball Player of the Year.
McCarthy is joined on the All-Delco first team by Bonner & Prendergast’s Deuce Ketner and Kevin Rucker, Central League juniors Jake Sniras of Garnet Valley and Matt Gardler of Marple Newtown and Cardinal O’Hara senior Aasim Burton.
All six first-teamers are first-timers, thanks to a storied 2023 senior class that monopolized last year’s team and 14 of 18 honorees overall. McCarthy and Sniras were second-teamers last year, Gardler and Rucker on the third team. The All-Delco team is selected in consultation with local coaches.
McCarthy is the first Episcopal boys basketball Player of the Year, but the school has produced three All-Delco boys basketball players since relocating to their Newtown Square digs in 2008. They were Alex Capitano in 2020, Conner Delaney in 2017 and Nick Alikakos three times (2015-17).
Not to fixate on the 3-pointers, but they require a little more ink. McCarthy topped 70 3-pointers in a sophomore season where he averaged 15.2 points per game. He canned 75 (in two fewer games) as a junior, averaging 18.3 ppg.
So there would be no mystery about McCarthy’s credentials in his senior season, nor about the dire imperative to get a hand in his face or throw exotic defenses at him. And yet … 95 3-pointers in 25 games, at a 40 percent clip, and an average of 19.3 ppg.
Perhaps the biggest change this year came in the area he was most concerned about: His team’s record. All those 3s didn’t produce winning basketball, the Churchmen toting sub-.500 marks in his sophomore and junior seasons. The first occasioned a coaching change: Brian Shanahan, who helped convince McCarthy to go to EA, was replaced by Taylor Wright, McCarthy’s advisor and freshman baseball coach.
The result this year was a 14-12 mark against a grueling schedule. And while a 5-2 start in the Inter-Ac crashed to a 5-5 finish to miss out on a title, the progress was unequivocal for McCarthy.
“This was my best EA season in my career, as a team,” he said. “I think that under coach Wright, he really started us in the right direction from the beginning of the season. It’s the most prepared we’ve been for games. Definitely beating Malvern Prep twice was a big accomplishment for our team, and it started us off well for the Inter-Ac. We had a couple of injuries that hurt us at the end, but we kept going.”
McCarthy had his options for high school. He was teammates in middle school in West Chester with the backbone of Henderson’s states team this year – Bonner & Prendergast transfer Nelson Lamizana, Connor Fleet and Daily Local Boys POY Nyle Ralph-Beyer.
He also had options for college. But when Army offered, he needed little convincing. His father had attended West Point, and military service appealed to McCarthy. When basketball made it possible, it was a done deal.
“I always had in the back of my mind going to a service academy, now that I wanted to play basketball at the Division I level,” McCarthy said. “I was going to see where that took me, and once I got an offer for basketball, I didn’t really look back from there.”
McCarthy will enroll in the summer without having to take a prep year. He knows he needs to get stronger and more versatile for college hoops. But growth was a theme of his high school career.
With McCarthy as the tone-setter, the Churchmen not only won games but did so with youth. Most his supporting cast – double-figures scorer Matt McCarthy (no relation), fellow junior Langston Foster, sophomore contributors Reggie King and Timmy Dennis – will be back. They excelled by sharing the ball and creating for each other. While it undoubtedly benefitted from the space Kevin McCarthy’s longball threat created, it’s a legacy he will leave for those that remain.
“I saw it coming, just from the summer, me working out with Matt and Langston, the two new guys,” he said. “But I definitely think we surprised people. I think people were not expecting us to be as good as we were.”
