Mount St. Joe too much for Goretti in BCL championship

TOWSON, Md. — St. Maria Goretti senior Justin Cheung scrapped for a rebound between two taller players. Then as he tried to put up a shot, it was slapped out of his hands. Cheung recovered the ball and shot a fadeaway, high off the glass and through the hoop.

But Mount St. Joseph followed with a textbook, tic-tac-toe, fast-break layup.

That’s the way it went for Goretti on Sunday in the Baltimore Catholic League tournament championship game at Goucher College.

Every basket that second-seeded Goretti got, it had to labor for. And most every bucket top-seeded Mount St. Joe got came easy. It added up to a 59-50 wire-to-wire victory for the Baltimore powerhouse.

Illinois-bound Amani Hansberry delivered 17 points and 21 rebounds to capture MVP honors in the tournament for the second straight year.

In a physical game, the sturdy 6-foot-8 Hansberry was too much to handle for the Gaels. Mount St. Joe (38-4) missed all five of its 3-point attempts, while 20 of its 23 field goals came from the paint.

“We wanted to throw the first punch and keep them down,” Hansberry said.

Goretti 6-foot-9 junior Caleb Embeya (10 points, 10 rebounds), the defensive player of the year in the BCL, battled hard but didn’t get enough help.

Goretti (27-7), gunning for its first BCL title since 2001, didn’t bring its best stuff to the title game. The Gaels hit 27.3 percent from the floor and the same figure from beyond the arc as they made 6 of 22 tries from distance, many of them forced.

“They defended and made it hard for us to get the ball inside. That’s really where they got us, in the post,” Goretti coach Sidney McCray said. “We had to make tough shots.”

Semi-tough

Goretti found it difficult to repeat the success of Saturday night in the semifinals when it defeated third-seeded St. Frances 68-62 behind senior Jahsan Johnson, who provided 29 points and six assists.

Johnson made 6 of 8 from beyond the arc in a shootout with the Panthers’ Carlton Carrington Jr., a Pitt-bound guard who scored 34 points.

Goretti had the edge in the front court as Najeh Allen contributed 18 points, while Embeya added 13 points, 13 rebounds and four blocked shots.

It was the first time in 11 BCL tournament meetings that Goretti had beaten its nemesis. The last time Goretti reached the BCL final was in 2019 when it lost to St. Frances 71-68.

Less than 24 hours later, on Sunday, Johnson (11 points) had his struggles as he got few clean looks on his way to a 2-for-12 shooting performance.

Both of Johnson’s field goals, back-to-back 3-pointers, came in the second quarter when Goretti sliced a 17-point deficit to 26-19. But in the second half, the closest the Gaels came was to within six points and that was in the final minute.

Allen also found the going more difficult against formidable Mount St. Joe as he failed to score in the first half. Allen scored all 10 of his points in the second half before fouling out with 4 minutes left.

Goretti misses Alexander

Goretti entered the championship game after splitting two look-alike regular-season games. Goretti won at home in January 54-52 and lost at Mount St. Joe, 54-53, three weeks ago.

One difference Sunday was that Goretti standout Dionte Alexander was sidelined in a walking boot.

Alexander, who suffered a stress fracture in his right foot four weeks ago, gutted out the second Mount St. Joe game. But with a college career in his future (at Belmont Abbey), Alexander elected to sit out the tournament.

“They were missing one of their better players,” Mount St. Joe coach Pat Clatchey said. “Injuries are part of the game, but that kid’s an all-league player.”

In the first meeting with Mount St. Joe, Alexander did much of the damage, scoring 19 points.

“I think they missed him huge,” Hansberry added. “That’s a guy who can get downhill, another guy we’d have to guard and respect, and another one of their rebounders as well. We really had a field day on the boards.”

Goretti’s turnaround

It was a sweet run to the final for a Goretti team that had struggled the previous three seasons, going 9-26 in the league the last three years.

Embeya, a transfer from the Patrick School (N.J.) played a huge role in the resurgence, along with a strong senior core of Alexander, Johnson, Allen, Cheung and Tristan Cook.

“Great season,” McCray said. “We’re all the way up here in Hagerstown. We don’t get the talent up here that some of the Baltimore schools have. The guys that we do have, they tough it out, they develop over time and they work their butts off for me.”

What’s next?

It’s not the end of the road for Goretti just yet. The Gaels will return to the Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament Thursday through Saturday at Frostburg State University in Cumberland.

Among other teams competing are Interstate Athletic Conference powerhouse Bullis, Catholic of Virginia Beach and tournament host Bishop Walsh, which handed Goretti an 84-78 loss on Feb. 17.

Four teams from the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference also will play: DeMatha, McNamara, Gonzaga and St. John’s, which won the WCAC tournament in thrilling fashion over national powerhouse Paul VI a week ago.

It has been tradition for the top two teams from the BCL to play in the ACIT but Mount St. Joe has opted out.

“It’s like walking off and hitting a grand-slam home run in the seventh game and somebody says, ‘Oh, you gotta play three more games,’” Clatchey said. “It’s just too much.”

Mount St. Joe also played in the final of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association tournament last weekend, losing to St. Frances.

“Amani, Ty, Ace, they rarely come out of the game,” Clatchey said. “I don’t want to put them in the position of having injuries or things like that. My decision was supported by the team and the school.

“I don’t know about the parents,” Clatchey quipped.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Mount St. Joseph tops St. Maria Goretti for BCL basketball title