PENNSYLVANIA PREPS Holy Ghost Prep only PIAA unbeaten

The tournament got underway this weekend.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Holy Ghost Prep entered the PIAA basketball tournament with a unique distinction. The Firebirds were the only undefeated team in any of the four boys classes.
The PIAA boys and girls tournaments got underway Friday with first-round contests in boys Class AAA and A and girls Class AAAA and AA. Play continued Saturday with games in boys Class AAAA and AA and girls Class AAA and A.
Pre-finals play is March 9-17 before the tournament wraps up with the eight championships games March 19-20 at the Giant Center in Hershey.
Holy Ghost defeated Oxford 58-56 to win the District 1 Class AAA title, upping the Firebirds' record to 27-0 and giving them their first district title since 1996.
Holy Ghost played Lancaster Catholic (25-5), the No. 4 team from District 3, in the first round Friday.
Undefeated curse
Entering the PIAA playoffs with an unblemished record can be a curse, but Holy Ghost coach Tony Chapman doesn't see it that way.
"We haven't talked about our record," said Chapman, a 26-year coaching veteran. "Being unbeaten just sort of happened, but the state tournament is a new season so what we've done doesn't matter."
The Firebirds are led by 6-foot-5 Lenwood Greenwood, who averages 15 points per game. Brett Manney, 6-3, and Jamie Cousart, 6-2, average 11 and 10 points, respectively. The other starters are Ryan Manney, the 6-3 twin brother of Brett, and 6-3 Drew Braunstein. C.J. Fisher, 6-1, is the top reserve. All are seniors.
"We had seven of our top 10 players back from last season, so doing well hasn't been a surprise," Chapman said. "I don't know that we thought we'd be undefeated, but we knew we had a good team."
Holy Ghost was hardly challenged during the regular season, averaging 62.8 points and allowing 40.8 in its first 22 games. The Firebirds won 18 games by 12 points or more and 14 games by 20 points or more.
Strength questioned
Still, there are some questions in the Philadelphia area about the Firebirds' strength.
"The knock against us is that we didn't play in a very strong league," Chapman said, referring to the Bicentennial League. "The league has Class AA and A schools, but we tried to play as competitive a non-league schedule as we could and went against good Quad-A teams, a couple of the [Philadelphia] Catholic League schools and Malvern Prep, which is always pretty good.
"We would have liked to have scheduled schools such as Chester, but it just didn't work out," he said.
In District 3, Reading won the boys Class AAAA title by beating Red Lion 54-24. It was the first District 3 basketball championship for Reading since 1983 and its 17th overall.
In boys Class A, it was a case of new coach, same result for Scotland School.
Scotland won the District 3 title under first-year coach Randy Taylor, defeating Camp Hill 63-51. It was Scotland's fourth consecutive district championship, with the first three coming under coach Gerry Wilson.
New Castle in upset
New Castle pulled off a surprise in the Pittsburgh area, winning the District 7 (WPIAL) Class AAAA title despite being seeded 10th.
New Castle (24-4) upset powerful Oakland Catholic (23-5) 36-32 to win the district title. The 36 points were the fewest scored by the winning team in a District 7 Class AAAA girls final.
Villanova-bound
Allentown Central Catholic distance runner Frances Koons has given a verbal commitment to Villanova.
Koons won the PIAA Class AAA cross country title in the fall and was first in the mile and 3,000-meter events at the Pennsylvania Track and Field Coaches Association indoor championships last weekend at Penn State.
Her time of 4 minutes, 53.18 seconds in the mile was a meet record.
Koons was also considering attending Providence, Virginia, Duke and Pitt.
Five other individual records were set and another tied at the indoor meet.
Mike Wray of Philadelphia Central won the 60-meter hurdles in 7.86 seconds, breaking the record of 8.05. In the girls 60-meter hurdles, Valley's Mycaiah Clemons had a record time of 8.83 seconds.
Latavia Thomas of Philadelphia West Catholic won the 800 meters in 2 minutes, 8.47 seconds, bettering the record of 2:12.67. Andrew Rademacher of Hickory won the boys pole vault with a record height of 16 feet, 3 inches and Easton's Lindsay Regan won the girls pole vault with a record height of 12-6. Jannea Bridgeford of Upper Darby tied the record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.52.