Germantown Academy holds off Malvern Prep, gains share of Inter-Ac title
FORT WASHINGTON >> At 2-2 in the Inter-Academic League back in mid-January, nobody was giving Germantown Academy’s boys basketball team much chance of winning another league title.
Nobody, that is, but the players of Germantown Academy.
So Tuesday afternoon, following the Patriots’ 87-80 win over Malvern Prep, a win that gave them a share of the Inter-Ac crown along with Episcopal Academy, the players of GA had reason to gloat.
They also had reason to recall when things weren’t going exactly according to plan, and what they decided to do about it.
“No one was giving us even an outside chance of coming back,” said senior Kyle McCloskey, who would finish with 42 points, played a major role in a 14-0 run that turned a 53-all nailbiter into a runaway win. “But we felt we could come back and do it.
“We’ve never known what it’s like not to win the Inter-Ac.”
So the Patriots (19-6, 8-2 league) got busy, turned every practice into a hard-work extravaganza and set about turning things around.
Along the way there was the five-overtime epic against the Haverford School and last week’s four-point win over Episcopal.
Tuesday’s win was just the final piece to the puzzle that no one outside of the Patriots felt was ever going to come together.
“This team just decided it was going to do everything it could to win the championship,” long-time head coach Jim Fenerty said.
Tuesday, that preparation seemed to be in jeopardy of going for naught.
The Friars (9-12, 5-5) owned the boards early on, and controlled the scoreboard, as nine points from Tommy Wolfe and eight more from Rahdir Hicks helped the visitors stay even with the Patriots after a quarter.
Malvern stayed close in the second quarter, but behind 18 points apiece from McCloskey and Evan-Eric Longino, the Patriots went into halftime nursing a 46-44 lead.
It was 53-all midway through the third when the Patriots and McCloskey blew the game open.
A 14-0 run, paced by back-to-back treys by Cole Storm and nine points from McCloskey, opened up the lead and put the Friars in the rearview mirror.
“We’ve been doing that all year,” McCloskey said. “Basketball is a game of runs, and we hit one at the right time.”
The Friars would not recover, although they did make it close at the end of the game when GA may have been caught celebrating prematurely.
“We got some stops, and we starting running and that’s what we do,” Fenerty said. “People say you can’t run on Malvern, but we don’t know any other way of playing.
“This is a team with five seniors, and when we got in trouble early this year people said we should be going to some of our young players.
“But I wasn’t about to do that. These five guys have been here through all of the success and I knew they knew how to turn things around.”
Suitably turned around, all that was left was the celebration.
“The seniors knew they wanted to go out on top,” McCloskey said. “It was just the power of will, the desire to win.
“And we dedicated this last one to Coach Fenerty.”
Top Photo: Germantown Academys Evan-Eric Longino drives to the basket during the Patriots’ game against Malvern Prep on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017. (Gene Walsh/Digital First Media)
