Roman Catholic’s Xzayvier Brown leads the Cahillites back to a Catholic League championship game

Xzayvier Brown has been on this stage before. The Roman Catholic point guard, now a senior, got minutes as a freshman on the star-laden team that featured the likes of Jalen Duren, Lynn Greer III, and Justice Williams. That team lost in the 2020 Philadelphia Catholic League boys’ basketball championship game to Neumann Goretti.

Brown, who will play college basketball at St. Joseph’s next fall, helped lead the Cahillites back to the Catholic League Final Four in each of the next two seasons, but Roman Catholic lost to Archbishop Wood in the 2021 final before going down in last year’s semifinal against Neumann Goretti.

Inside the Palestra on Wednesday night, there were times during the first of two PCL semifinals that it looked like Brown’s run at Roman would end without a championship. Archbishop Wood’s Jalil Bethea, a junior guard and the league’s Most Valuable Player, scored 14 first-half points. Roman struggled to get stops and couldn’t convert on offense.

Brown, for his part, had 10 by halftime, but Wood still had a four-point lead (36-32). It would’ve been larger if Brown hadn’t scored four of his 10 inside the final two minutes of the half, part of a 7-0 run to close the second quarter.

This was it for Brown. A senior season, which he approached knowing it was his last chance to leave high school with the coveted PCL title, had come down to 16 minutes.

“We were in foul trouble and we knew we were down but we didn’t play good,” Brown said. “We just dialed in and played defense.”

Sure, Roman played better defense — Brown locking down Bethea was a big part of that. But it was Brown’s takeover in the second half that propelled the Cahillites into Monday’s Catholic League championship game, where they’ll meet crosstown rival Neumann Goretti.

» READ MORE: St. Joseph’s 2023 basketball recruiting class has a trio set on making it ‘cool to play in Philadelphia again’

The 6-foot-1 guard scored 12 of his 22 points in the second half. Roman Catholic opened the third quarter on a 9-0 run and Wood never led again. That run included a pull-up three-pointer from Brown to give the Cahillites a 39-36 lead. Each time Wood cut the deficit, Brown was there to make a play. He drilled another triple early in the fourth to extend the lead to six.

Later, Wood, which was led by Bethea’s 22 points and Milan Dean’s 16, cut Roman’s lead to 56-54 with less than two minutes to play.

In a timeout huddle, Roman coach Chris McNesby knew the play and so did Brown, who McNesby said is going to make a great coach someday. McNesby couldn’t recall exactly if Brown called it or they said it at the same time.

The ball went to Roman senior forward Anthony Finkley, Brown’s future teammate on Hawk Hill, on the left wing, and Brown worked around him toward the corner. Brown quickly flashed as if he was going back toward the ball before making a hard cut to the basket. He was open, Finkley hit him, and Brown’s layup made it a two-possession game. Then down the other end it was Brown securing a rebound that effectively ended the game.

But it was Jermai Stewart-Herring’s dunk that sealed the deal for Roman. Brown then ran by the basket as the Roman Catholic student section bursted. He threw his arms out and let out a yell before getting back on defense. His job was done, and another Palestra performance by a Catholic League guard was complete.

Fittingly, Neumann Goretti great Ja’Quan Newton, the league’s all-time leading scorer, was in the building to watch the Saints play.

The list of talented Catholic League guards is long, and McNesby has been around for a lot of them. Just in the last decade he coached Tony Carr, Nazeer Bostick, and Shep Garner to league titles at Roman. He watched from afar as Greer and Seth Lundy cut down the nets for Roman Catholic during McNesby’s break from coaching.

“He’s right up there with all of them,” McNesby said of Brown. “As a coach, when you have a point guard who can kind of just run the team, run the offense, don’t turn it over, shares it, it makes it a lot easier as a coach. I’m a better coach because of him.”

» READ MORE: Lansdale Catholic girls will live their Palestra dream in the Catholic League final

The only question that remains is how it ends Monday night. If Wednesday night was any indication, Brown isn’t going to go down easily.

“I want to end the last run on my own,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to end it for me.”