When it comes to loving their teams, nobody beats Crusaders basketball fans.
And when it comes to the stands at Father Judge High School basketball games, nobody has a bigger cheering section than Derrick Morton-Rivera.
The senior shooting guard almost always has a large section there to pick him up in big moments, and he almost always delivers.
“Yeah, it’s pretty unbelievable, on road games our team only gets like 100 tickets sometimes, but they always come,” Morton-Rivera said. “My mom, my dad, my grandmoms, aunts, uncles, they’re all there. They love it. And just them being there, seeing me grow up. They’re traveling to see us win games. It’s a great experience.
“It means a lot. Yeah, I hear them. We get a lot of support as a team, too. We have great fans, they always want to see us do good.”
Fans must love what they’re seeing with this team for the second year in a row.
After not making the trip to the Palestra since winning the 1998 Catholic League championship, Father Judge has now advanced to the Catholic League semifinals three years in a row.
When he was a sophomore, Morton-Rivera helped Judge make their return to the Palestra after 26 years, but the end result was a quarterfinal exit.
Last year, the Crusaders not only got back to the Palestra, but won two games there, including the Catholic League championship, the school’s first in 27 years. Prior to last year, the last time the Crusaders won, coach Chris Roantree was a player on the team.
Judge went on to win a state championship as well last year, giving the school, alumni and neighborhood a reason to celebrate.
“I feel like it was important to the neighborhood, but I was really happy for the school,” Morton-Rivera said. “And it was big for the school because it was 27 years and 27 is a huge number for our school (refers to the 27 graduates of Father Judge High School who lost their lives during the Vietnam War). It was crazy how the numbers match up. Our coach, he was on that team, he knew what it felt like. But the students always want to go to the Palestra, they love coming to show support. I think we got the best fan base.”
They showed up Wednesday to see Morton-Rivera put on a show and send Judge back to the ‘chip for the second straight year.
He scored a game-high 27 points to lead the Crusaders to a 52-46 win over Wood at the Palestra. They’ll play again Sunday at the same spot for a chance to go back to back. The opponent? Dad’s old school Neumann-Goretti.
Judge also qualified to return to the state championship this year to defend its 6A championship.
But Morton-Rivera has been having a huge season before the playoffs even began.
One major accomplishment was when he passed Marc Rodriguez to become the school’s all-time leading scorer. Rodriguez serves as the strength and conditioning coach for the Crusaders and he might have been prouder of Morton-Rivera’s accomplishment than the player was for his achievement.
It not only puts him in the record books, it gives him his own legacy, which isn’t easy when your father is DJ Rivera, one of the best to ever play in the PCL.
“It means a lot being able to leave a legacy, make a name for myself,” Morton-Rivera said. “A lot of people know me from being DJ’s son, he went to Neumann-Goretti and he was great. I’m glad I can make a name for myself at Judge.
“I know Marc pretty well, he’s our athletic trainer in the gym. I’ve built a relationship with him, he talked about it all the time. He was excited for me to do it and that meant a lot. He’s a great guy, we were talking about that all season.”
Next year, Morton-Rivera isn’t going far.
He’s headed to Temple to continue his basketball career. He credits the Owls coaching for making him feel welcome.
“Hometown, honestly, my fan base will still be with me, play at home, stay at home and play for a great program, bring a lot of people out,” Morton-Rivera said. “The coaching staff is great, they’ve been coming to my games, AAU games, traveling to me. It meant everything.”
Temple has everything he is looking for, including a good reputation for business, which he’s majoring in.
It will need to be pretty great to live up to his experience at Judge, and he isn’t shy about saying it.
On top of being one of the best scorers in the league, Morton-Rivera might be the best teammate in the league, too. And because of that, he made sure to take care of his teammates.
“Can I say something about my teammates, because we have some great ones,” Morton-Rivera asked. “My teammate Rocco (Westfield) is a great leader. He switched roles this year to help us. And he’s doing great. Khory Copeland is in his first year and he’s playing great for us. Jeremiah Adedeji is getting confidence and better every game. On defense, too. And Naz (Tyler) and Max (Moshinski). They fight on offense and defense and get rebounds. It’s everyone.”
While the entire team has stepped up, Morton-Rivera knew what he had to do to get Judge to the championship. And he did it.
“I feel like I took a bigger role, because we had a lot of seniors and captains last year,” he said. “Now I’m captain. I wanted to be more vocal, get more involved. I think we’ve all been talking to each other. We had a lot of tough losses, the captains brought our team together.
“All season, when we were losing tough games, we said we want to be playing better at the end of January and in February. It’s what we did last year and what we’re doing now.”
