Pocono Mountain West, ACCHS get impressive wins
Something is going to happen Thursday night that hasn’t happened before.
Either Pocono Mountain West or Allentown Central Catholic will win a boys basketball championship for the first time in the latest version of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.
Both the Panthers and Vikings punched their return tickets for Thursday’s title game at Allentown’s PPL Center with impressive semifinal victories on Tuesday night.
Pocono Mountain West used a strong second half to beat Parkland 61-52 and Allentown Central Catholic withstood an Emmaus run in third quarter and pulled away in the fourth for a 64-52 victory in the second semifinal game.
So, it’ll be West against ACCHS at 8 p.m. Thursday for the boys crown after the Central Catholic girls take on unbeaten Easton at 6 p.m. in the girls championship game.
Pocono power
Parkland’s Nick Coval was voted by the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference coaches as the league’s MVP earlier this week.
It was not a popular choice among some Pocono Mountain West players who felt their star senior, Juju Pagan, deserved the honor. Junior Devin Artis, who guarded Coval along with sophomore Jonathan Mateo had a statement to make.
“didn’t do too well in the first game against us and when the coach gave me the news that my best friend Juju didn’t get MVP I took it personally,” Artis said. “I felt Juju deserved MVP. I told him I was going to get this one for him and I was going to lock Nick for him. I had to do it for Juju and the seniors. My thoughts were to keep limiting touches for him and we’d be good.”
Coval wasn’t exactly locked down. He still scored 29 points, including 15 in the fourth quarter as Parkland tried to scramble back.
But he had to work hard just to get the ball, much less get off shots.
Coval was coming off a 43-point effort against Bethlehem Catholic in the quarterfinals, but had just two points in the first quarter and three in the third when Pocono Mountain West took command.
Trailing 27-25 at halftime, the No. 2 seeded-Panthers (20-4) began the second half with a 9-1 run. Parkland didn’t get a field goal in the third quarter until Coval scored off a Matt Ray feed with 2:55 left in the period.
“I thought we did a really good job in the third quarter,” Pocono Mountain West coach Rich Williams said. “Devin Artis and Jonathan Mateo did a good job of taking away Nick, which is obviously a very difficult job because Nick is a phenomenal player. I was obviously very proud of the job those guys did.”
Williams was also pleased with how the rest of his players performed on defense.
While Coval was 9-for-15, the rest of Parkland’s perimeter players were a combined 4-for-23. As a team, the Trojans were 4-for-18 from 3-point range.
“Parkland has a lot of good basketball players, but I thought we did a real good job of swarming and kept them in front of us, especially in the second half,” Williams said. “Juju has a really good supporting cast around him and it’s not even the guys most people know. Devin Artis is not usually a big offensive player, but he made some big shots tonight. Mateo came off the bench and gave us good minutes and Ethan Sakwa hit a couple of 3s that were huge. In years past, we haven’t had that kind of depth. We’ve been playing with five or six guys the last two years.”
Artis closed the third quarter with a 3-pointer to make it 39-32 and the Panthers pulled away with an 11-2 run to start the fourth period.
From there, it was a matter of making foul shots and West went 23 of 29 from the foul line with Pagan, a Kutztown University recruit, going 12-for-12.
Pocono Mountain West had four guys reach double figures with Pagan and sophomore Adrian Brito scoring 14 apiece.
Freshman Kyon Coles, Jr. added 12 and Artis chipped in 10.
Coval got a lot of help early from junior Zaire Smaltz, who scored eight points in the first quarter and had 10 at halftime. But he didn’t take a shot in the second half.
“Our team came together and we come together every day,” said Artis. “We tell each other we love them. We’ve got each other’s back and we’re not done. It’s going to take effort and heart on Thursday. We’re looking forward to coming back here and getting a W.”
Since the Panthers are going into the District 11 5A tournament after reaching the 6A finals last year, the win over Parkland proved to be the last time they would play a 6A foe this season.
“If you win the league, you know you’ve gone through the gauntlet of a season and a tournament and it would mean a lot to us,” Williams said. “Winning a title in an 18-team league, that’s what pops. You can go up and down the list, there are some great teams in this league. We’re looking forward to coming back down and playing Thursday that’s for sure.”
Central surprise
Pocono Mountain West hasn’t won a league title since their fourth consecutive Mountain Valley Conference in 2013-14.
That same year, ACCHS won the last Lehigh Valley Conference championship with a team that won its first 29 games and reached the state quarterfinals unblemished.
Both the Panthers and Vikings joined the new EPC the following year and Central made one previous appearance in an EPC final in 2018 when the Vikings lost to Bethlehem Catholic.
This ACCHS team (16-8) is a bit of a surprise to be playing for the league gold since it started the season 0-4, lost at Bethlehem Catholic 45-37 on Dec. 22, dropped a pair of games to Allen and also fell to Emmaus 59-49 in the regular-season finale.
But here they are, a win away from their eighth league title thanks in large part to the league’s top defense. The Vikings stifled a potent Green Hornets offense with its 2-3 zone.
“I’m really proud of our guys because we knew we’d have to play really well to beat Emmaus because they have a really good basketball team and have had a great season,” Vikings coach Dennis Csensits said. “Our defense is always our calling card and tonight it was really good.”
Csensits was especially pleased with 6-foot-8 junior David Fridia.
Playing in the middle of Central’s zone defense, he registered 14 rebounds and blocked three shots.
“He came off the bench and he really stepped up,” Csensits said. “Other guys came off the bench and played well. We’re playing well as a team on offense and we continue to grow at that end of the floor. Defenses have to guard everybody right now which opens up the floor for different things.”
It opened up for sophomore Jahrel Vigo, who had just six points in the first half, but exploded for 15 after intermission and added a crowd-pleasing slam dunk to put a punctuation mark on what was arguably Central’s biggest win since winning the 2021 state title in Hershey.
Sophomore Lucas Mushrush hit four 3-pointers for all 12 of his points, senior Griffin Patridge tallied nine and Anthony Jones and Nico Pulieri chipped in eight apiece.
Emmaus, meanwhile, had trouble finding its offensive rhythm. Chase Muckey and Will Barber led the Green Hornets (19-5) with 15 and 14 points respectively, but others who average in double figures were held down.
Central led from start to finish. The Vikings opened a 29-22 lead late in the first half and extended it to 35-25 with 4:45 left in the third quarter.
Emmaus went on a 7-0 run to get within 35-32 with 2:30 to go in the third, but Mushrush hit a 3 and Vigo scored to make it 40-32 entering the fourth quarter. Then Patridge made his second 3-pointer and Vigo drove the baseline to make it a 15-point spread with 6:30 left and the Green Hornets never recovered.
“It’s an unfortunate time to play one of our worst games,” said Emmaus coach Steve Yoder. “We have a lot of disappointment. We’re just going to have to own that. We needed to be better. Congratulations to Central and we move on to districts.”
Yoder said it was frustrating because ACCHS didn’t do anything that surprise the coaches and players.
“We knew what was coming and we worked on it in practice and we really looked good in practice,” Yoder said. “I’m struggling right now to figure out the disconnect between practice on Monday night and us not doing the same thing in the game. I just don’t have the answer to that just yet.”