Haverford School Drops Heartbreaker To Malvern Prep

It was one of those games Henry Fairfax will incessantly replay over in his head. A shot here. A rebound there. A deflected pass. A missed free throw. coach will no doubt revisit of all those little things, all the things that if at the right second, at the right moment occurred would have spelled a great early-season victory for a good, young team.

Instead, the Fords lost to powerful Malvern Prep, 61-53, in double overtime Tuesday afternoon. The victory kept Malvern Prep perfect this season at 15-0 overall and 2-0 in the Inter-Academic League, while the Fords fell to 10-4 and 1-1.

Ray Hollman scored 12 for Haverford School and chipped in with 10. But will stay with the Fords most, what will gnaw at them—with a little nudge from Fairfax—is the blown 50-44 lead Haverford School had with 2:53 left to play in regulation.

“We had them and we let it slip,” said Foreman, who played a great overall floor game before fouling out in the second overtime. “We’re a young team and we let the pressure get to us. The turnovers and missed free throws down the stretch killed us. We make our free throws and we don’t turn the ball over and we win by double digits. But I’ll tell you this, I’ll remember this game. We put the pressure on ourselves to win out, and that means we’ll have to beat (Malvern Prep) on our court when we play them.”

Fairfax kept stressing he didn’t want to come to Malvern Prep searching for a moral victory. His point was driven home within the first two minutes of the game, when Malvern Prep got out to a 8-0 lead. Then Haverford School, the team Fairfax envisions this season, appeared.

The Fords were causing turnovers. They were running Malvern Prep into the ground with layups and accurate three-point shooting. Mostly, the Fords were playing exceptional defense.

The teams traded leads in the first half before Foreman and Hollman put the Fords in position to pull off a mild upset with less than three minutes to play.

“Then our inexperience showed,” Fairfax said. “What happened tonight was we let our emotions get the best of us. We had a lead and then we folded under the pressure. We played hard, which is what we wanted, but we played dumb, dumb in critical points of the game. We did learn a lot about this team, and there is a lot to like. But I told the kids to let this sting. You learn and grow from this, and hopefully we will.”