New coach, same winning ways: Harcum men’s basketball is rolling into the JUCO nationals

A favorite if sporadic stop on the local college hoops parade: A junior college powerhouse headquartered in a converted CYO gym on Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr. Yeah turn at the ACME, it’s right there.

Inside, special things tend to happen.

“Can we dunk?” a Harcum College player asked John Ball, Harcum’s first-year head coach.

Ball thought for a moment.

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“Yeah, I don’t care,” Ball said, then explained to a visitor, “We’re not allowed to dunk in pre-game – we’re the only level.”

Since an opponent scheduled for a non-league game canceled, and it was the last home game of the season, Harcum improvised beautifully. The program still had what they call Sophomore Night, celebrating the players moving on to four-year colleges. The improvisation was having the varsity play Harcum’s JV, reduced to half a game, but with the rest of the trappings. PA announcer bringing it like always. Referees still officiating.

But, yeah, they could dunk.

When you’re 26-1 going into the regional tournament, ranked 25th nationally, a little celebration seems obligatory. A loose night, the dunks carrying into play. Ball said it would be like the NBA All-Star Game. In fact, way better, the JV guys seeing this as their Super Bowl. At Harcum, it turns out there is basketball talent past the first string.

A banner on the Our Lady of Good Counsel wall celebrates last season’s national Elite Eight appearance. Right now, Harcum needs two more wins to get back to the national tournament.

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In the JUCO world, that tournament simply is called “Hutch,” the places where dreams go, all the games in Hutchinson, Kan.

“We have five guys who were on last year’s team that went to Hutch, and they want that experience for the new guys,” Ball said. “They saw the whole atmosphere, the pageantry, everything – they saw, more importantly, all the Division I coaches they got to play in front of.”

Ball took over the program this season after being assistant coach under Drew Kelly, who built the program, then took a job last year as an assistant at DI Northern Illinois. Ball counts eight players currently playing in DI, from Zid Powell, the second-leading scorer at Buffalo; to Mohamed Wague at West Virginia; Tre Dinkins at Canisius; Louis Bleechmore at St. Joseph’s; Derrius Ward at Texas-Rio Grande Valley; Nick Brennen at Manhattan; Oluwasegun Durosinmi at Northern Illinois; plus Abdou Tsimbila at Fordham, who spent a year at Harcum but didn’t play for the team.

The DI transfer portal has slowed the recruiting way down, which makes sense. Division I programs may know what they need, but don’t yet know who will be in the portal.

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“Everyone has done what they’re supposed to do,” Ball said of this year’s DI prospects. “At this point, it’s kind of, do the college coaches need that position?”

A note: in Harcum’s records, the team is 26-1. Officially, the National Junior College Athletic Association has them at 20-7, with a bunch of January forfeits. Ball explained that the second-semester eligibility was not submitted correctly to an online portal. The program went through a mandatory audit and all players were found to be eligible. An appeal went up the NJCAA ladder, Ball said, “they came down harshly.”

In real terms, it doesn’t matter. Harcum needs to win two games in the Eastern District tournament Friday and Saturday in Monroe, N.Y., to return to Hutch.

If they get there, eyes will be on this year’s top scorer, Amahrie Simpkins, whom Ball scouted in Brooklyn on the last day before the PSAL playoffs were canceled in 2020 due to the emerging COVID pandemic.

“It helped me because at first I didn’t really have anywhere to go out of high school,” Simpkins said. “I started playing basketball under the whistle my junior year of high school.”

Bernie Blunt transferred in from playing a season at Quinnipiac, looking to bounce back to DI.

“It’s just a breath of fresh air – a second home,” Blunt, the team’s second-leading scorer, said of being at Harcum.

Kelly, the former coach, used to say that a lot of former players who moved on to Division I would call him years later and say their time at Harcum was the most enjoyable experience of their careers. Ball, a former video coordinator at La Salle under John Giannini, can see that, but said it can be hard to note in real time.

“They might be a little too young and they have such big aspirations of Division I,” Ball said.

This night … they all saw it. A big dunk had everyone off the bench and racing down the court in celebration. Nothing but fun, although the game was tight to the end. Sure, a couple of varsity stars sat out. And the rest played it loose in the early going until the scoreboard told them to get going. They grabbed the lead back, the JV took it back, the lead went back and forth, the scoreboard working to keep up.

“Please don’t put who won,” Ball joked afterward.