Pretty wild March for the Parkland Trojans, who become the first District 11 team since Parkland in 2004 to make the PIAA Finals in the largest basketball classification. This team is coached by Eddie Ohlson, who was the point guard on that 2004 team. The obvious story in the Valley is that they went through two Philly Catholic League teams to get here - beating Roman Catholic last weekend and Archbishop Wood on Tuesday night. I think it's the first time a D11 team has beaten a PCL team in the 4A or 6A playoffs. I know Parkland was previously 0-5 against Roman, most notably losing with the Sam Iorio (pro in Europe), Devante Cross (NFL), Kenny Yeboah (NFL) team in quarterfinals which is the best D11 basketball team in my memory. I know the PCL doens't win every year (Reading is the defending champ, who lost in the final 4), but it's clearly a better brand of basketball, so a pretty collosal set of wins for Lehigh Valley hoops as a whole.
If the win, it will be the first D11 champ in the biggest class since Whitehall won 4A in 1982. Also in moments of symmetry, the star of that Whitehall team was Scott Coval, who played at William and Mary and was an assistant at W&M and Penn State before coming back to the Valley as the head coach at DeSales for the last 28 seasons. His son Nick is the star of this Parkland team.
What's crazy is that I wouldn't say it's a team overflowing with talent. Nick Coval is a Davidson commit and a 2,000 point scorer in his career, and is obviously very good. But he's a 6'2 shooting guard who isn't exactly a physically dominant player. He's their only college prospect - four of their other seven guys in the rotation are football players, quarterback Luke Spang (going to Franklin & Marshall to play football), wide receiver Connor Johns (going to UPenn to play football), tight end/defensive end Robbie Ruisch (going to East Stroudsburg to play football), and backup quarterback Blake Nassry (just a freshman, he's one to watch in both sports, he hit two monster free throws down the stretch of the Wood game, very impressive compsure for a 9th grader in addition to being 6'4 and athletic). I don't follow high school basketball super closely, I know that Central York was 5th in District 3, but has been hot in the tournament and has three low-level Division I players in their lineup (Patriot League types?).
tribhssn.triblive.com
