Top Five College Basketball Players that came from the WCAC

Keep current with WCAC alumni currently expected to do big things in the upcoming NCAA Division 1 basketball scene thanks to Inside The Locker Room and Ryan McFadden.

Inside The Locker Room

The Washington Catholic Athletic Conference is the home to some of the area’s well-known schools like DeMatha, Gonzaga, St. John’s, and Good Counsel. This conference also has produced a numerous amount of Division I and professional athletes especially in basketball. Below is my list of some of the top college basketball players today that came from the WCAC.

1. Melo Trimble (Bishop O’Connell)- University of Maryland 

Courtesy: http://terrapinstationmd.com/

Terps point guard Melo Trimble has been at the top of this game since playing basketball at Bishop O’Connell.  He was the number player in the state of Maryland, the seventh best shooting guard and the 29th best player in the country. In his senior year of high school, Trimble averaged 23.1 ppg and scored a career high of 47 points in a game against Gonzaga.

Melo took his talents to Maryland and was an immediate impact to the team. He led the…

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Ups & Downs + Rivalry Week

Tonight basketball aficionados all over the country will have their eyes glued to ESPN to watch two of the greatest rivalries in the college game today: Georgetown vs. Syracuse and Duke vs. UNC. It is officially Rivalry Week on the premier sports network and the saga continues this Friday on ESPN2 when Gonzaga plays DeMatha at the Kathy and Morgan Wootten Gymnasium / Convocation Center. I’m going to let that sink in for a minute.

In two days DeMatha will play a regular season home game on ESPN2.  Before we get ahead of ourselves let’s recap what has transpired in the WCAC so far because the drama has been thickening quickly, of late. For starters there is a good chance that when Gonzaga and DeMatha play this Friday that it will only be for second place in the WCAC. That would be due to the fact that Paul VI is currently undefeated in league play. Let’s get down to the get down…

January 21, 2012 Gonzaga edges out DeMatha 76-74 at Bender Arena on the campus of American University in their first meeting of the WCAC season. The good news is that the Stags came all the way back from an eighteen point deficit to tie the game. The bad news is that DeMatha missed out on their opportunity to stick it to Gonzaga and the cause was the familiar nemesis of free throws.  Kris Jenkins had one of the most outstanding games I have seen a Gonzaga kid play. It wasn’t a good day for the Stags to come out flat but again, at least the slide would be short lived.

The Stags cruised to their second win against Archbishop Carroll on January 24, winning the contest 78-66 in what would turn out to be the last home game for super sophomore Johnnie Shuler in a DeMatha uniform. The backup point guard that dazzled college scouts with expert ball control transferred to the DCIAA public school Theodore Roosevelt amid rumors and speculation. I, for one, hate to see him go out like that but I wish him well. Never let it be said that sophomore year at DeMatha is easy which I suspect is the reason for the blazer color change to red/maroon for the junior year: you have to earn it.

The first place Paul VI Panthers proved that their early national ranking and successes were justified when they defended their home court against DeMatha on January 27^th. DeMatha, again, didn’t make enough foul shots and let a spirited crowd rush the floor when Paul VI made a last second shot to win the game 64-62. The Panthers made things even more interesting in the WCAC when they also beat Gonzaga 66-53 in a command performance at home four days later to take firm control of first place.

Just to show you that this phenomenon of even the top echelon of teams losing in tough regular season WCAC match-ups isn’t isolated it is wise to note that Paul VI was the second team to beat Gonzaga this year. The Purple Eagles fell to rival St. John’s College Cadets 56-54 on January 29^th. DeMatha took care of business on January 31^st winning at St. Mary’s Ryken, 92-62 in the two teams’ second regular season meeting. I wasn’t at that game, but I was told that DeMatha looked sharp.

The Stags continued their winning ways against St. John’s College 76-54 on February 3^rd to close out the Cadets for the regular season. While the Cadets have shown marked improvement, I was more impressed with how DeMatha Head Coach Mike Jones was able to tweak his line-up to best St. John’s. With Johnnie Shuler gone it almost seemed like DeMatha was having back-up point guard auditions. Not to fear, Stag faithful, the cupboard is full and next year some will be surprised that newly promoted players from Junior Varsity can be great.

Last night Our Lady of Good Counsel lost to DeMatha for the second time 64-37 –this time at home in a game promoted by Coaches Against Cancer. DeMatha has one more home game tomorrow night against Bishop Ireton before the nationally televised game on Friday, and I hope that they can keep up the good work. I wrote a little while ago that I was drunk of the Stags but now it is finally time to get to the sobering work of winning a WCAC Basketball regular season by hitting free throws and defending our home floor. It isn’t rocket science.

Mike Jones already knows this stuff and we have guys that have been here before. James Robinson is just starting to get into his highest gear. The Cookie Monster has worked the kinks out of his mechanics. Jerami Grant is starting to play more responsibly –like an All Star should. Marcellous Bell is still killing teams, slowly, three points at a time. The kids are going to be alright.

I believe that we will win.

Prince George’s County Clash

The DeMatha Stags got their seventh conference win last night by defeating Bishop McNamara 90-75 at Kathy & Morgan Wootten Gymnasium. The game was a lot closer than it would appear, but the story of the night was the fact that DeMatha was able to bounce back after a tough loss at the Hoop Hall Classic in Springfield on Monday. There is no hiding the fact that this DeMatha team isn’t perfect, with their own unique set of problems and a blemish on their 16-1 record.

No one is aware of that fact more than DeMatha Head Coach Mike Jones and he has demonstrated as much with his willingness to experiment with line-ups in order to increase production. Brock Ruble, a 6’9” sophomore, got the start versus McNamara over BeeJay Anya after what many are calling a lackluster showing for The Cookie Monster against Bishop Gorman.

The Cookie Monster instantly became one of my favorite DeMatha players during his freshman year when he came into the game for the first time and promptly made two free throws. The big guy has struggled of late from the line: he went 0-2 against Bishop Gorman and the trend continued against McNamara. It is disappointing to see a kid struggle with his shooting mechanics when it appears to be a regression, but I understand that this is actually all a result of BeeJay’s hard work at transforming his body.

The rest of the DeMatha team can’t really make that excuse and whatever woes The Cookie Monster has been having from the charity stripe are the latest symptom of a greater problem. The Stags haven’t been shooting well from the free-throw line, as a whole, and McNamara was able to tie the game at 44. Granted, the Stags would end up winning the game by a fairly large margin but DeMatha isn’t going to be able to afford to allow teams to hang around.

Drunk off the Stags

The DeMatha Stags basketball took their undefeated record and #3 national ranking into the Hoop Hall Classic in Springfield, Massachusetts this past weekend but they came up a little short.

The Stags won the first game against one of the best schools in Connecticut that was previously undefeated on Saturday. The weekend didn’t go sour until Monday when the Stags faced #23 Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas, Nevada –a team that they beat last year in the final of the Les Schwab Invitational in Portland, Oregon.

The bitterness that the consensus number one player in the country, Bishop Gorman’s Shabazz Muhammad, must have felt after the loss last year only contributed to his stellar rematch performance against the Stags on Monday. Shabazz Muhammad was all over the court and had the most points against a DeMatha basketball team since Corless Williamson in 1990, with 37 points. (Corliss Williamson scored 43 of his team’s 56 points in a loss to DeMatha and then the Stags went on to an undefeated season in 1990- 1991.)* The differences between the two DeMatha teams from different eras still remain subtle in my estimation.

In the 73-65 loss to Bishop Gorman at the Hoop Hall Classic it appeared as though foul shooting and individual defense are two areas in which they will have to improve on in order to be compared with the likes of the last undefeated team at DeMatha. The zone defense that DeMatha started out in proved to be too slow during the rotations to Shabazz Muhammad, and he had 19 points in the first half of play alone. By the time DeMatha switched to man-to-man midway through the second quarter the damage was done, and Bishop Gorman took an eight point lead into the locker room.

Shabazz Muhammad began to tire when the Stags went to a four guard set on offense and tried to deny him the ball by filling in the passing lanes on defense, but the high school All American still came up with big plays in the second half. Marcellous Bell and Jairus Lyles helped DeMatha trim a 13 point lead down to 2, but that would be the closest that they would ever get. The Cookie Monster and Jerami Grant were both in foul trouble, and neither was particularly effective on the offensive end. Kelvin Howard also got a start for the Stags but he didn’t wind up producing any points.

DeMatha didn’t appear to have the right personnel on the floor in order to win the game and the Stags held the ball deep into their possessions and tried to force the issue down low. Bishop Gorman used a platoon of players to frustrate the Stags with a stifling defense, and their speed translated well with a lot of fast break points on the offensive end. The combination of strategies and executions proved that Bishop Gorman was the better team and they handed DeMatha their first loss of the season.

The brightest spots of the game for the Stags came when there were four shooters on the floor capable of dribble-driving to the basket. Instead of exploiting DeMatha’s deep guard play the game plan predictably focused on a methodical inside game that ultimately slowed down the works on both ends. Mike Jones is a great coach, but I’m wondering out loud here if he had to do it all over again would he stick with the zone defense against Shabazz Muhammad for so long? Mike is a friend of mine and I know that he can take the criticism, besides who hasn’t gotten drunk off the Stags?

Anybody that thinks that Shabazz Muhammad is getting stopped with a zone defense on ESPNU is clearly inebriated and using questionable judgment. DeMatha can hardly afford a hangover tonight at home against Bishop McNamara or Saturday on the road against Gonzaga –two league games that will show if the Stags have any resiliency.

More on that later, though. For now, Go Stags! 

 

*Statistics may be erroneous, false, or completely fabricated.

Nicknames & Crazy Talk

The Cookie Monster

Why? I call BeeJay Anya that now because, quite frankly, he’ll take your cookies.  Plus The Cookie Monster is gangster. 

Seriously try to put something up around the rim and see (click his name or the picture) what I’m talking about here. Despite his recently publicized weight loss the svelte BeeJay Anya has a knack for cleaning the opposing players’ plates. The Cookie Monster blocks the shots of those players foolhardy enough to serve up the round sweetness. 

Those same opposing players’ fans are what gave me the idea to give BeeJay Anya a nickname like I did for Marcus “The Long Ranger” Coker. Fans from other schools would chant “Shrek” whenever BeeJay touched the ball and I felt that it was a little derogatory. Even though Shrek is basically benign, if he isn’t seen as benevolent, but Shrek is a pussy green.

Anyway, DeMatha won the game against the Philadelphia team Neumann-Goretti in the Cancer Research Classic 62-47 and BeeJay “The Cookie Monster” Anya had 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 9 blocks. I’m giving The Cookie Monster credit for even more rebounds because Jairus Lyles didn’t do his part in creating opportunities as he was 7-8 from the field while hitting 3-4 from behind the arc for 17 points, as well.

Jerami Grant chipped in 14 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 steals. I could go on but give me something to write about tomorrow. Let’s stick to the nickname story and the Cancer Research Classic results. Paul VI fell down to St. Raymond of the Bronx earlier today 68-61 without the help of their leading scorer because he was late attending class and was penalized a game. Gonzaga won their game against Whitney Young of Chicago after trailing in the first half and let’s just say it was interesting.

The WCAC has two teams vying for a national title now and television announcers are getting a little crazy. Now Dave Telep (ESPN) is on record as saying that a certain player at a certain school other than DeMatha resembles DeMatha great and Basketball Hall of Fame honoree, Adrian Dantley.

No.

Not even a little bit.

Stop playin’.

With Adrian Dantley on the floor DeMatha had a 57-2 record and won multiple titles.  The player in question has nothing to compare to that due to the fact that he is a junior and DeMatha has won the last three years…

Well, I think you know where I’m going with this. The bottom line is Dave Telep (Twitter) said some ol’ disrespectful crazy talk on ESPNU and I think that he owes Adrian Dantley and DeMatha an apology.  At least harass him about it.