Charles Brown and the George Washington boys basketball team fell to defending league champ Martin Luther King in the Class AAAA title game, 59–46. TIMES FILE PHOTO
By Ed Morrone
Times Sports Editor
In the first half of Friday evening’s Public League boys basketball Class AAAA title game, George Washington had defending champion Martin Luther King wobbling and teetering on the ropes. For a few moments, a knockout punch seemed well within reach.
Then, disaster struck.
The Eagles smothered King with their trademark ferocious defense and built a 25–16 lead in the waning moments of the first half. The Cougars twice called timeout to stop the bleeding, and they looked nothing like the vaunted Division A powerhouse that claimed a league title last season.
But on the strength of three late treys, King closed the gap to 28–27 at halftime; Washington still appeared in good shape, but the Cougars stole back the momentum they desperately needed.
Then, Washington star forward Charles Brown picked up his third and fourth fouls less than 90 seconds into the third frame. When Brown slumped dejectedly to the bench, King pounced, scoring the first 16 points of the quarter before Washington finally scored a free throw with 1:44 left. By then, King led by 14, and the Cougars never led by less than nine the rest of the way, winning by a final of 59–46. It was the closest of calls, but Brown’s costly foul trouble and poor shot selection from his teammates thereafter ultimately doomed the Eagles.
“We had a plan, and our plan was working,” Eagles head coach John Creighton said. “Then, in the third quarter, everybody forgot the plan. It just fell apart. We expected to hang with them, even if nobody else in the city did, and for a half we did. It was a great first half, and we didn’t take a bad shot while making them work for everything they got. The third quarter came and we had to sit our best player, and it took the air out of our guys.”
Brown scored nine points, all in the first quarter. With him on the bench, the lead suddenly turned into a major deficit, and Washington rushed things, taking shots three to four seconds into each possession. This played right into the hands of King, a team that excels in transition off the defensive glass. Both fouls on Brown — the first appeared to be a clean block all the way — occurred on the fast break, and Washington simply never recovered.
“Having our best player sit as long as he did was tough, but it’s not solely on him … it’s on everybody,” Creighton said. “We took a lot of bad shots early in possessions against a team that loves to get out and move. We just gave the ball right back to them. We tried to get it back all at once, even though there’s no such thing as a 10-point shot. One or two things didn’t go right, and it just kind of crumbled after that.”
This is not to take away from the season Washington had, because it was arguably the best one in program history. For a Division B team that’s never won a league title to be a half and two additional wins away from winning the whole thing is a major accomplishment, even if the sting of defeat is still outweighing just how far they all came together.
The loss dropped the Eagles to 19–6 overall, winning all 12 division games and knocking off Kensington and Frankford before falling to King. And despite the loss to the Cougars, Washington will still have one shot left at vindication and will play either Roman Catholic or La Salle sometime next week to determine District XII’s third and final state playoff participant.
“Right now it’s tough for everybody in our locker room,” Creighton said. “They knew we had them, and we had everything going right for us. Now we have to come back with a clear mind to get ready for either La Salle or Roman. Our goal all along was to get to states, and despite this hiccup we still have an opportunity to do that. The toughest thing for them to realize right now is that they had a real opportunity to win this game but let it get away. Now they have to go back and put in that extra work to focus back on that goal.”
Despite the rocky end to Brown’s postseason, he was a major reason why the Eagles were here to begin with. He will most certainly be playing Division I basketball somewhere later this year; senior teammates Elmange Watson and Quadere Allen led Washington with 11 points against King, and senior forward Jerome Blume had seven rebounds. King’s Sammy Foreman and Jabri McCall each tallied 17 points for the victors.
Now, all the Eagles can do is attempt to regroup and try to breathe final life into a season they desperately hope they can extend. Even despite the fact that many of the team’s key players will be graduating, there’s reason to believe the future is bright for Washington basketball. Creighton has had tremendous success in his three seasons on the job, and as long as he sticks around, the Eagles should be fine, even if they have to build the program back up again to get back to this point.
“A lot of these guys came from the land of misfit toys,” Creighton said. “A few of them, including Charles, came from somewhere else where people told them they weren’t good enough or on a JV team where folks said they couldn’t make it on varsity. Their whole season they went out to prove everyone wrong. The same goes for this game; they wanted to show they could hang with King, and for a half they did. But I think it also showed us that we still have a lot of growing to do.” ••
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