After 25 years, title run golden as ever
Midway through the 199293 boys basketball season, Pottstown seemed perilously close to being toppled from its perennial perch atop the Pioneer Athletic Conference.
A little more than two months later, though, the Trojans stood at the top of the PIAA mountain, having carved a lasting legacy among the area’s all-time great sports teams.
Twenty-five years ago (April 2, 1993, to be exact) Pottstown brought home the Class AAA state title with an 85-66 victory over vaunted Valley to cap an awe-inspiring postseason run.
The Trojans parlayed a bevy of skill, savvy, athleticism, hard work and hunger into a potent package on the court, one made all that much more powerful under the tutelage of highly-respected head coach Ken Davis.
Though it’s been a quarter-century since the memorable run that also saw a sixth-straight PAC-10 title and third straight District 1-AAA crown, the notable names of that revered roster are fondly remembered by longtime fans.
There was super sophomore swingman Howard Brown, a multi-sport standout who would later enjoy a standout college basketball
“What set that team apart was that we played for each other, had great leadership and had a genuine love for one another.”
– Pottstown great Howard Brown on the Trojans’ 1993 PIAA Class 3A championship team
career at Villanova and play professionally for 13 seasons.
Explosive junior wing Mike Perate, a left-handed offensive linchpin who averaged a team-high 19.5 points per game while entertaining with his high-flying style.
Stout 6-foot-3 senior center Dave Auman, a relentless rebounder and the ‘93 squad’s lone remaining link to the ‘91 edition of the Trojans that had fallen in the state final.
Tenacious Tommy Harvey (15.2 ppg), a quicksilver sophomore point guard who was equally adept at penetrating, hitting the 3, running the fastbreak and finding the open man.
And battle-tested role players such as sophomore Marcus Ricketts, senior sixth-man Bob Stumpf and senior forward Jesse Scott, who rounded out Davis’ mostly seven-deep rotation.
“What set that team apart was that we played for each other, had great leadership and had a genuine love for one another,” Brown said. “I really learned that over my professional career, but that’s the kind of thing that epitomizes teams that are successful. Everyone was committed to that one ultimate goal of winning and doing whatever it took to accomplish that.
“We played not only for each other, but for our community as well. And to see all of our friends and family in the stands wherever we went was really special.”
Senior Mike Hawkins and juniors David Charles, Brad Neiman and Mickey Yonas composed the remainder out the roster for the Trojans, with assistants Dave Bennett and John Iswalt and scouts Mark Drauschak and Chuck Seponski making up Davis’ roundball brain trust.
“The foundation – hard work, playing strong defense and being unselfish – had been established in previous years,” said Davis, whose squad had gone 29-2 in 1991-92.
Still, the ‘93 Trojans had to establish their own identity and forge their own path while dodging some adversity – most notably Brown’s broken leg suffered during football season that caused him to miss a big chunk of the first half of the season.
“It started off as a really rugged year,” Davis admitted. “We were searching for a lineup and the kids had to hang in there and work hard.”
Pottstown opened the season with a 57-54 victory over Hill School in the McDonald’s Tip-Off Classic thanks to 20 points from Perate, including the go-ahead basket with 55 seconds left. But the Trojans fell to Quad-A power Norristown 61-54 in the tourney final.
It appeared to be business as usual in the PAC-10, as Pottstown opened league play with four straight wins by an average margin of 18.5 points. After splitting their two Holy Name Knights of Columbus Christmas Tournament games (losing to Governor Mifflin and beating the host Blue Jays), the Trojans suddenly started to hit more potholes than Route 422 drivers in early spring.
The first was a 62-53 loss to St. Pius X that snapped Pottstown’s 34-game league winning streak.
Then there were back-to-back defeats to Spring-Ford (64-58) and Great Valley (58-44) – a stretch during which Davis at the time said, “we better start showing some guts quick, or somebody is going to be gone.”
After falling 61-50 to Owen J. Roberts (which had never beaten the Trojans and had lost by 20 to them the first time around), the Trojans were a pedestrian 5-5 overall since their 5-1 start.
And when Lansdale Catholic eked out a 46-44 win over Pottstown on Bob Schneider’s turnaround jumper with one second left, a lot of folks figured maybe it just wasn’t going to be the Trojans’ year.
“Coming to school after some of those losses would hurt,” Brown admitted. “That wasn’t normal for us, and there was some doubt that things might not happen the way we planned. But we just came back after every game and kept working hard, pushing one and other and reinforced things with a positive attitude.”
The return of the 6-3 Brown (who would average 13.3 points per game) in the season’s 14th game was a muchneeded shot in the arm, and the loss to Lansdale Catholic would be the final time Pottstown tasted defeat.
“When Howard returned, it added another dimension to a team that was still finding itself,” said Iswalt, who had won a state title as a player at Reading Central Catholic in ‘85 and would eventually succceed Davis as the Trojans’ head man. “After that Lansdale Catholic loss, Coach Davis ratcheted up the intensity, responsibility and roles on the court.”
“A lot of people felt that was the year our streak of consecutive (PAC10) championships could have been broken,” said Davis. “But I thought we were playing pretty well going into the playoffs. There was this feeling of being relaxed. ‘Fresh legs and fresh minds,’ was a mantra I believed in, especially when you get to the playoffs.”
And once they hit the postseason, the Trojans responded with at 13game tear that should be framed and put on the wall.
They closed out the regular season with double-digit wins over SpringFord and Upper Perkiomen and entered the PAC-10’s Final Four playoffs as the second seed. In the league semifinal, they turned the tables on Lansdale Catholic with a 50-38 victory highlighted by dominant defense and a 17-rebound effort from Auman.
That set up a PAC-10 title tilt with top seed St. Pius X, but the Trojans weren’t about to give up their status as the league’s top dogs. Perate – a standout pitcher in baseball who would play collegiately at Villanova – scored 20 points and Brown shut out dangerous Pius swingman Brian Lee (who had torched Great Valley for 26 points in the semis) en route to a 5346 victory.
Pottstown began the District 1-AAA tourney by taking out Pottsgrove 7256 courtesy of 21 points from Perate and 20 points from Auman.
The third-seeded Trojans then dispatched Holy Ghost Prep 53-37 in the quarters and Upper Moreland 59-50 in the semis to advance to the District 1 final for the sixth straight season.
The opponent, again, was Lansdale Catholic. But the fourth meeting of the league rivals would be the most one-sided, with Pottstown opening leads of 9-2 at the quarter and 4124 at the half on the way to a 70-47 victory. Perate erupted for 26 points, while Harvey scored 18.
Coaches always hope their team can peak at the right time in the postseason, but what the Trojans did in the PIAA tourney had to be beyond Davis’ wildest dreams.
First, they shot the lights out in a rout of District 11 No. 3 seed Tamaqua (97-77). Harvey went off for 30 points and Pottstown scorched the nets for a 73 percent shooting effort from the field that included eight 3-pointers.
“Tommy Harvey might have only been a sophomore, but he was one of the best high school point guards I’ve ever seen,” recalled Tom McNichol, The Mercury’s sports editor in 1993. “He was fast. Could shoot. Totally grasped Kenny’s ideas about how to run the fastbreak. Kenny’s teams ran, but they ran with purpose. They worked on fastbreaks a lot in practice, and Harvey was the maestro.”
In the second round of states, the Trojans shot 57 percent – with Perate (23 points), Brown (21) and Stumpf (18) leading the way – to lay waste to District 2 champ Bishop Hoban (8150).
“By the time we had come out of districts, we were having a lot of fun,” Brown said. “Things were happening that hadn’t happened before. People were dunking on people, there were lights-out shooting performances and we were really dominating people on defense. It was just a lot of fun.”
Once Pottstown hit the state quarters, the defense again took over in a 57-35 win over District 2 No. 3 seed Lake Lehman.
That would be the case again in the semis, as the Trojans were locked in a nail-biter against District 1 third seed Academy Park. Trailing 42-41, Pottstown went up to stay on a threepoint play by Perate (23 points) with two minutes left to punch the squad’s ticket to Hershey.
“I said the same thing for all 17 years: Poise, effort and execution,” said Davis, who compiled a 374-101 career mark and also guided the Trojans to the PIAA-AAA final in ‘95. “You do those three things to some degree of precision, and you’re going to have a good chance of winning.”
In the state championship at storied Hersheypark Arena, the Trojans were considered by many to be a heavy underdog to District 7 champ Valley, which featured Duquensebound scoring machine Tom Pipkins.
“We were the underdogs, but we wanted to prove we were the better team at the end of the day,” said Brown, whose cousin Anthony just completed his junior basketball season at Pottstown. “I remember going to Hershey with Tommy Harvey two years before and seeing Del Savage, Aaron Beasley and those guys lose and we were up in the stands crying with everyone else.
“The day before our state championship, Tommy wrote me a letter and it was something to the effect that ‘I know we’re young, but we might not ever have this chance again, and we have to take full advantage of it.’ We were going to do everything we could to leave there with a championship.”
The Trojans did exactly that, with Brown scored 15 of his 26 points in the first half as Pottstown raced to a 17-point halftime lead and cruised.
“We always had that mentality that if someone presses us, we’re going to make them pay,” Davis said. “And that’s what happened. We just had a terrific first quarter and were able to keep it going.”
Brown wound up going 10-for12 from the floor, Harvey scored 23 points, Perate had 19 points, and Auman grabbed 10 rebounds to erase the memories of the 67-61 loss to Perry Traditional Academy two years earlier and send the 1,500 or so Trojans fans that made the trip into a euphoric celebration.
“It was a surreal moment,” Iswalt said. “It was a like a dream you don’t want to end.”
Which provided a fitting end to a dream season that still resonates strongly 25 years later.