By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
sullyglorydays@gmail.com
MT. HOLLY — Throughout the course of a high school basketball season, teams sometimes have to reset themselves.
On Saturday at the Jeff Coney Classic at Rancocas Valley High, Cherry Hill East hit the reset button in a big way, bouncing back from a one-point loss against Winslow by putting on a shooting display in a 73-61 win over Pitman.
Coming into Saturday’s action, the Cougars had lost 2-of-3 after ripping off 12 straight wins to start the season.
“This gets us back on track. We know what we have to do, we just have to stay together,” said senior point guard Jacob Jones. “In our practice after the loss (to Winslow) we just focused on staying together and moving on to the next game. That was a tough loss, but it was a loss where we beat ourselves, so we just had to regroup. Going forward, we’re just going to take it day by day, hopefully keep getting wins and take it from there.”
It might have been Group 4 Cherry Hill East against tiny Group 1 Pitman, but the Panthers have one of the top scorers in the state in senior Elijah Crispin, whose father and uncle both were 2,000-point scorers in high school. Crispin has nearly 400 points this season and is 314 more away from hitting 2,000, but the Cougars limited him to just 13 points on Saturday, including just four in the first half when East scored 52 points to take a 52-34 lead into halftime.
“He scores about 30 points per game and is one of the leaders in the state. It was a good team job. We followed the game plan of not letting him catch the ball as much,” Jones explained. “We wanted to find him, deny him the ball and as soon as he got it we wanted to throw two (defenders) at him and get him off the ball. We wanted other people to run their offense, we didn’t want him running it.”
“He’s a great player and a great scorer, just like his dad and his uncle. It’s in the blood,” said Cougars coach Dave Allen. “I’ve seen him score 30 — and that’s when teams are focusing on him. He could get 50 if you don’t focus on him. Our No. 1 job was to try to keep the ball out of his hands as much as possible, and then once he got it to give (defenders) help, and turn defense into offense. That really pushed us to be able to score in transition.”
East (14-2, 3-1 Olympic American) started the game off on a 10-2 run and led 17-7 after a 3-pointer from Chris Delgado, but Pitman stormed back to shave the deficit to 17-13 on a three from Greg Peterson. But Delgado nailed a floating three at the buzzer to push the Cougars’ lead to 22-15 after the first quarter. That was a harbinger of things to come, as Delgado nailed two straight threes early in the second quarter, giving East a 28-19 lead. In all, he hit five threes in the first half and all of his 17 points came in the first two quarters.
The hot shooting wasn’t limited to Delgado, though, as Jamieson Young nailed three long-range shots and finished with a team-high 20 points, and Jones added another 3-pointer and had 12 points. East put four players in double figures, as Chris Abreu added 10 points.
Crispin nearly had a triple double, as he scored 13 points, added 10 rebounds and had seven assists, and Michael Fisicaro and Aidan Stranahan added 19 and 15 points, respectively. Fisicaro sank a game-high six 3-pointers, but the halftime deficit was too much to overcome. Pitman (10-3, 6-0 Tri-County Classic) got to within 67-59 with less than three minutes to go, but the Cougars did enough from the foul line in the final two minutes to keep the Panthers in check.
“The first half we shot the ball well,” said Jones. “Delgado had about five threes and I think Jamieson had four, it was just all-around good shooting.”
Coach Allen said he and his team are focusing in on the little things after a 59-58 loss to Winslow on Thursday in which the Cougars gave up a 38-28 halftime lead at home.
“Those things happen. We didn’t shoot it well in the second half (against Winslow) but we shot it well today,” Allen said after the win over Pitman. “And I thought our defense was much better today. We’re trying to really focus in on rebounding, not turning the ball over, making our foul shots. If we can do that we’ll be able to compete with anybody.”
WHAT’S NEXT: Cherry Hill East travels to Rancocas Valley on Tuesday at 5:15 p.m. Pitman travels to Clayton on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
