McCaffery: Changing times have Chester High at basketball crossroad

CHESTER — For as long as Keith Taylor could remember,  which is to say his whole life, the formula was solid, successful, bold and purposeful. So naturally, the sixth-year Chester High basketball coach would follow it again, confidently and without question.

The task was scheduling, and the attitude was unwavering, a bring-on-any-challenger crescendo of confidence.

You want to play?

OK.

Where, when … and what door do you want us to leave by after we win?

So it will be again this season, at Ninth and Barclay and in various stops around a handful of states, that the Clippers will endeavor to use a rough, out-of-conference schedule to toughen up for the postseason tournaments and the eternal, obsessive, single-minded goal of winning a state championship. That will begin Friday night at 7 against visiting West Philadelphia and eventually include encounters with Downingtown West, Lower Merion, Reading, Coatesville, Bartram, Chambersburg and Overbrook, classic Eastern Pennsylvania programs one and all.

Chester will also take on Paterson (N.J.) Eastside. Delaware challengers will include McKean, Newark and Delcastle Tech. There will be games against Imani Christian of Pittsburgh and William Penn of York.

Essentially a typical Chester schedule.

One problem: Little is typical in high school basketball any more, and because of that and other factors, Chester, as proud a program as there ever has been in Pennsylvania, is at a perilous intersection of expectation and reality.

“What I tried to do, is schedule with those guys in mind who I thought were going to be here the following year,” Taylor said. “And once you make it, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Chester’s feeder pipes are study enough to continue to flood the Fred Pickett Jr. Gym with gifted basketball players. So it will be this season. Guards Terrence Cobb, Kyree Womack and Breilynd White are back from a team that reached the PIAA Class 5A Final Four last season. So is powerful, 6-5 big man Jerry Young. Dominic Toy arrives after a stellar season as a football tight end and, while listed at 6-5 looks closer to 6-7. And Taylor is anticipating a big year from 5-10 Dante Payne.

But Taylor expected that sturdy group to be supplemented by All-Delco Larenzo Jerkins, who transferred to Neumann-Goretti, and Kevin Rucker, a second-team All-Delco who dropped 27 on Bishop Shanahan in a playoff game last season before eventually moving to Bonner & Prendie. Transfers happen. But that was a one-two gut punch.

“It’s part of the game, with these folks doing that,” Taylor said. “Nothing has changed. They think it’s OK by doing some of the things they are doing, but it’s actually illegal, according to the PIAA. It’s in the laws.”

That’s Taylor’s take on the transfer portal and he’s not budging. But his task beginning Friday is to make sure the Clippers don’t budge on the basketball floor, either.

“We look at it as a challenge,” Taylor said. “Most of the guys are like, ‘Hey, let them go. We are going to do what we do.’ We can’t worry about them. Next man up. It gives somebody else an opportunity to play that normally wouldn’t be getting that time.”

Taylor can coach, Toy and Young will be a physical front-line handful for any opponent, and the Clippers have been conditioned to expect greatness.

That never changes, even if the roster always does.

“There’s definitely been some changes,” Cobb said. “But with the team we have, if we build that chemistry up, we can definitely take this thing far.”

The Clippers have won eight state championships and were within a game of playing for one just months ago, so they’ll show up. But they have been squeezed up to Class 6A this season and are about to have their string of 43 consecutive Del Val victories – and that 58-game home conference streak – vigorously challenged.

Clyde Jones, as good a coach as there is in Delaware County, has it going at Chichester, which made its first state tournament last year and returns the top four scorers from that squad, led by double-figure averagers Maz Sayed and Akhir Keys. Elite shooting guard Nasir Washington has surfaced at Penn Wood after thriving at West Philly to augment double-figures scoring forward Mekhi Shillingford and deep threats Anthony Murray and Sadiq Fountain from a nucleus that made Class 6A states last year. Spectacular football player Abu Kamara can hoop a little and should boost Interboro, which had a five-win breakthrough campaign last year. And former Strath Haven assistant Todd Hryn has Academy Park on a growth trajectory.

The Clippers have not had a losing season since 1963, but with that outside schedule and the sturdier Del Val, they will have to minimize their stumbles to earn a postseason bid. Not shockingly, they’re confident.

“We went to go farther this year than last year,” Womack said. “We want to bring that energy on the defensive end, and from there we want that state championship.”

At the Friday game, the Clippers will retire the No. 20 of Zain Shaw, the program’s all-time leading scorer, reinforcing that Chester has standards it expects to be maintained.

Even in changed times, Keith Taylor knows all the fine print of that formula.

Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com