Golden Panthers send Spring-Ford a message

The Spring-Ford Rams basketball team's first visit to Pope John Paul II High School took place in a steady drizzle.  They might have preferred playing in the rain to the sort of precipitation they found inside their new rival's gymnasium: 3-point field goals.

The Golden Panthers' Jeff Evans drained five 3-pointers on his way to 19 points and teammate Dave Cotellese added four long-range bombs of his own for a 27-point perimeter barrage that overwhelmed Spring-Ford (11-2 PAC-10, 15-7 overall) in its regular season finale and led Pope John Paul II (9-3 PAC-10, 13-6 overall) to a convincing 55-46 victory.

With these two teams potentially destined to face off again when the PAC-10 postseason starts this weekend, the game could be viewed as a message from the new school to the older one: you don't intimidate us.

As their fans' dueled from opposite sides of the court—the "Let's go Panthers" chant of Pope John Paul colliding with a wall of hoots and taunts from Spring-Ford's yellow-clad "Bleacher Creatures"—the teams themselves spent the opening minutes of the game feeling each other out.  After five and a half minutes, they had sparred to a 6-6 tie.

The Rams then went on a 7-0 run to close the first quarter and seemingly set the tone for another win over a PAC-10 rival.

Evans and Cotellese, however, had other ideas.

Early in the second quarter, just moments after the Golden Panthers' Mike Mansur opened PJP's 3-point scoring to make it a 13-10 Rams lead, Evans hit his first 3-pointer of the night to tie the game.

On the team's next possession, Mansur scored on a layup that orbited the rim twice before falling, giving the Golden Panthers their first lead of the game and silencing the Bleacher Creatures.

Evans followed with another 3-point bomb to widen the lead to 18-13, completing a 12-0 run.  The teams traded jabs for the remainder of the half.

Andrew Scanlan's lone score of the night put the Rams ahead 24-22 with 29 seconds left in the first half, but as time ran out, Cotellese hit a 3-point shot to put the home crowd into a frenzy and send the teams into the locker room with Pope John Paul II up, 25-24.

Spring-Ford briefly regained the lead at 26-25 shortly after play resumed, but Cotellese answered with another three to give the Golden Panthers a lead they would not relinquish for the rest of the game.  Supported by some strong inside work by teammate Paul Mills, Evans and Cotellese spent the third quarter lighting up the scoreboard from beyond the arc and giving Pope John Paul II a 48-33 cushion as the game moved into the final period.

The Rams, though, were not done, opening the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run that prompted Golden Panthers coach Jack Flanagan to call a timeout and regroup his troops.  After Zameer McDowell (19 points) scored to make it a 50-44 game with 1:25 remaining, the Bleacher Creatures awoke.

The Rams pulled to within four points with 50 seconds left in the game, but the battle for possession then forced them into foul trouble.  When Evans was sent to the line and made both his free throws to give the Golden Panthers an eight point cushion with less than 30 seconds remaining, the Spring-Ford fans began heading to the exits.

Spring-Ford        13   11   9   13 – 46

PJP II                   6  19   23    7 – 55