Boyertown clamps down Upper Merion for fourth straight win

BOYERTOWN >> The Boyertown basketball team sent a wake up call to the Pioneer Athletic Conference earlier this week when they knocked off perennial league power Spring-Ford for the first time in four years.

“Everyone thinks Boyertown’s an easy win,” junior Tre Diguglielmo said. “We don’t want that anymore. We want to make sure we’re coming in and giving everyone their best shot every time.”

The Bears followed the marquee win with a 51-38 victory over Upper Merion in a Pioneer Athletic Conference crossover matchup Thursday night to match another feat the program hadn’t accomplished in several years.

Junior Aarick Salata led the way with 15 points, Diguglielmo added 12 points and 12 rebounds, and senior Mason Marinello chipped in another 12 points as the Bears won their fourth straight contest, a streak they hadn’t matched since opening the 2015-16 season with five wins.

After an eight-win campaign in 2017-18 and a nine-win campaign in 2018-19, the Bears brought back four starters this season. They are off to a 5-2 start, including two Liberty division wins, one off their combined total of the last two seasons.

“We’ve kind of been waiting on this year for a long time now,” said Salata, a three-year varsity player.

“That’s the whole thing about the season, we’re changing the culture,” he added. “We’re trying to change Boyertown’s outlook around.”

Like the Bears, Upper Merion entered 2019-20 as an experienced team eager to build on last year. The Vikings (1-2 Frontier, 2-4) brought back all five starters, but have yet to match anticipated results as they deal with injuries. Chris Clark went down with a torn ACL and Nick Shepperd has been hampered with an ankle injury.

Speedy sophomore point guard Ty Jones (11 ppg) and junior sharpshooter Lukas Kim (8.1 ppg) have attempted to anchor the Vikings in the early going.

Kim, who finished with 14 points, knocked down two early triples as Upper Merion went ahead 10-7 after the first quarter Thursday. Another three by Collin Bowman, who followed Kim with nine points, gave the Vikings a 13-7 advantage one minute into the second.

“Those guards we kind of lean on, Lukas and Ty,” Upper Merion head coach Jason Quenzer said. “Scoring, facilitating for us, they’re tough to take off the floor.”

The Bears are relying on their defense this season, holding opponents to fewer than 52 points in all but one contest — a 64-37 loss to PAC favorite Methacton. The length of forwards DiGuglielmo (6-4), David Leh (6-5) and Kameron Metcalf (6-7) with Chris Kiefer (6-3) and Alex Schaefer (6-5) manning the middle of the paint has made their 2-3 zone hard to penetrate as Boyertown is allowing just 46 points per game.

That was again the case Thursday as they held the Vikings to 38 points. The Bears’ defense was particularly disruptive in the second quarter when it held Upper Merion to five points. Boyertown turned a 17-13 deficit at the period’s seven-minute mark into a 24-15 halftime lead by closing the quarter on a 16-2 run.

“It helps us control the tempo,” Diguglielmo said of the team’s defense. “Coach always says that we’re better when we play in the 30s and 40s rather than the 60s and 70s and 80s.”

“Our length, a lot of hands up in the paint, it’s going to be difficult to deal with for a lot of teams,” added Salata.

Upper Merion hung around, cutting the lead to four, 26-22, around the five-minute mark of the third quarter before Salata hit a three off an assist from Marinello. The Vikings got the lead down to six near the end of the quarter before Diguglielmo hit a late three to send Boyertown into the fourth with a 36-27 advantage.

The pattern continued in the fourth as Boyertown built its lead up to double digits before Upper Merion twice cut it down to six points, the last when Kim hit a triple to make the score, 42-36, with 2:30 remaining. The Bears handled Upper Merion’s press and did enough at the line, going 8-for-12 in the fourth to finish off the win.

Falling behind in the division and league standings is not a place the Vikings, who won the Frontier in their league debut in 2016-17, want to be. Another PAC crossover contest against Owen J. Roberts on Saturday before a non-league battle with Harriton on Monday will hopefully give Upper Merion some momentum before a welcomed nine-day break.

“With all the injuries we have now, this is a tough three-game stretch,” Quenzer said. “When we get into the new year, hopefully we get a little healthy, a little confident, play within our division a little bit more.

“We should be competitive. Every game we’ve played in, we haven’t been blown out. It’s just little things, and with some of the back end guys who usually don’t see minutes seeing minutes, it’s good for them in the long run. So eventually when we do get healthy, they have a little bit more confidence.”

Boyertown faces Upper Perkiomen on Saturday and then has six days off before a holiday tournament Dec. 27-28 and a non-league game with North Penn on Dec. 30.

Diguglielmo was the Bears’ top scorer 10 games into their season a year ago before fracturing his ankle in their first game back after New Year’s. He’s picked up right where he left off, averaging 11.1 points per game thus far behind only Salata (12.1 ppg) and hopes he and the Bears can continue to roll into the new year this season.

“I worked hard all summer, lifting, playing AAU, getting my ankle stronger, developing my whole game,” Diguglielmo said. “It just feels so good to be out here with my boys.”

“We just can’t rush anything, can’t get too cocky,”he added. “Once you get too cocky that’s when it gets out of hand. We just gotta play our game, play our brand of basketball, and we’ll be fine.”

NOTES >> Quenzer noted the play of younger players like Clark’s brother Chaz, who finished with five points, in place of some more experienced Vikings who are out…Dom Breece scored seven points for UM, and Leh and Alex Obarow scored six for Boyertown.

Boyertown 51

Upper Merion 38

UPPER MERION: Jones 1 2-2 4, Kim  4 2-2 13, M. Zielinski 0 0-0 0, Smith 0 0-0 0, B. Zielinski 0 0-0 0, Bowman 4 0-0 9, Breece 3 1-2 7, Clark 2 0-0 5, McLaughlin 0 0-0 0, Totals 14 5-6 38.

BOYERTOWN: Salata 5 3-4 15, M. Marinello 4 2-4 12, Diguglielmo 4 2-2 12, Leh 3 0-0 6, Metcalf 0 0-4 0, Obarow 2 2-3 6, Kiefer 0 0-1 0, Schaefer 0 0-2 0, Totals 18 9-20 51.

Upper Merion 10 5 12 11-38
Boyertown 7 17 12 15-51

3-point goals: Kim 3, Bowman, Clark, Salata 2, M. Marinello 2, Diguglielmo 2.