Delaware Valley basketball plays hard against Pocono Mountain East

The future looks bright for Delaware Valley’s varsity boys’ basketball team but the season just started so we can’t get too excited too soon. The excitement is in the lower-grade teams, freshman and JV.

The freshman team literally blasted Pocono Mountain East (PME) by a score of 64-50. Folks, it was not that close. Delaware Valley was up by 30 points when they relaxed and cleared the bench. Although some starters remained in the game, you could clearly see that they were not intending to humiliate the PME boys.

Top scorers were Trey Newton with 22 points, followed by Joe D’Antonio with 10 and Matt Marotta with 12.

Then, in steps the JVs. and it’s pretty much more of the same. It was a good solid victory by the score of 40-31. Again, it wasn’t that close. Delaware Valley was in control all the way. So as I said the future is looking very good. The top scorer was Alex Calvalario with 13 points. The rest of the scoring was very evenly distributed.

While the entire team played very well and contributed evenly, two players were especially impressive: Ben Ioffe and Colin McGarvey.

Then out came the varsity players. This one was a close game. Delaware Valley would fall behind then rally back to keep it interesting. At one point after following by 10 points, Delaware Valley looked really crisp and took a 5-point lead. Their shooting was really good. They had a number of 3-pointers. Tommy Parker hit two 3s and Alex Calvalario hit one. The half ended with a very close score of 31-33 PME.

In the third period Tyler Lombardo exploded for 13 points. He was so hot that I heard the PME coach yelling at his team to cover Tyler and to watch out for him.

The third period stood at 57-59 but a PME kid threw up a hail Mary shot that that hit nothing but net at the buzzer, making it 57-62. That seemed to take the wind out the sails for Delaware Valley and charged up the PME squad.

In the fourth and final period, Delaware Valley hung tough but in the final five minutes they just couldn’t make a shot and PME couldn’t miss. Delaware Valley gave it all that they had but fell short 69-80.

The top scorers were Tommy Parker with 24 points, Tyler Lombardo with 13, and Jackson Corrie with 11.

Again, all played well but Parker stood out. He was big on defense, blocking shots and rebounding on defense and offense. He truly is the class of this team.

Parker is 6’3” and is the tallest player on the team. That should tell you that they could really use some height. Despite the lack of height, the whole team played like they were taller than they are. They all rebounded well and also blocked shots. They will be fun to watch all year.