West Catholic is bringing its underdog mentality into the PIAA Class 3A boys’ basketball semifinals

The Inquirer, March 10, 1959:

Surviving a missed jump shot in the final second, West Catholic’s determined basketball team won the Catholic League title by nipping Father Judge, 59-58, before a howling, sellout crowd of 8,567 last night at the Palestra.

That would be the last Catholic League boys’ basketball championship for the Burrs, whose lineup that night included Jim Lynam, Herb Magee, and Jim Boyle, tough kids who all became successful coaches at colleges not that far from the Palestra or West Catholic.

Four schools that would win Catholic League titles after West Catholic have closed: St. Thomas More, Cardinal Dougherty, North Catholic, and Bishop Kenrick. But West Catholic, with about 175 boys, the smallest enrollment in the league, is still playing ball, deep into March.

The Burrs were a modest 7-6 in league play this year and are 13-13 overall in Miguel Bocachica’s seventh season as coach. They did not make it to the Palestra for the league semifinals, getting knocked out at Devon Prep by eight points in the quarterfinals.

“It was a pretty good season, but we expected it to be better,” said Rahmir Speaks, a sophomore guard.

But there is one enormous advantage to being the smallest school in what is the best basketball league in Pennsylvania: West Catholic is playing schools its size in the PIAA state playoffs. The Burrs now stand only two victories from their second state title in three years.

On Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Parkland High School in Allentown, the Burrs will play Holy Cross (25-4) of the Scranton area for the opportunity to play either Aliquippa or South Allegheny, both from the Pittsburgh area, for the state Class 3A title on March 29 in Hershey.

West Catholic is one of five Catholic League boys’ teams still chasing a state title, with Roman Catholic and Father Judge in Class 6A, Neumann Goretti in 5A, and Devon Prep in 4A. Since entering the PIAA in 2008, the Catholic League has never won four boys’ state titles in one year.

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When Jayvon Byrd, a sophomore guard, was asked before practice Wednesday what a state title would mean to him, he smiled and said, “A lot. We’ve worked really hard to reach our goal, and our goal is to win the state championship.”

West Catholic would appear to be at a disadvantage because the Burrs start four sophomores and a junior, with three seniors coming off the bench. But West Catholic feeds off the experience of Bocachica, 35, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Olney.

Before he was hired in 2018 at West Catholic, Bocachica was an assistant at Imhotep Charter, helping coach Andre Noble win two state championships. Bocachica applied for the West Catholic job just to see what an interview would be like — and he ended up getting hired.

“I knew West Catholic hadn’t won a ton,” Bocachica said in an interview in his office, “but I didn’t know the severity of it until we’d started winning.”

The West Catholic boys had one winning Catholic League season in the 13 seasons before Bocachica became coach. In 2013, they lost all 13 league games. They’d won only 10 league games in the three seasons before Bocachica arrived.

It is not as if West Catholic has accomplished little in sports since Lynam, Magee, and Boyle roamed the court. The Burrs football team won the Class 2A state title in 2010, and the girls’ basketball team played for the Class 2A title in 2018 and won the 3A title in 2021. The girls’ track and field team won the Class 2A title last year.

“I think it kind of lit a fire under everybody,” said Jazz Williams, the West Catholic athletic director and the Burrs’ boys basketball coach from 2014 to 2016.

At the start, Bocachica focused on simply getting his players to improve. He said the seniors on his first team bought in, thankfully for him. He lined up, and stuck to, a rugged nonleague schedule against teams mostly from the Baltimore and Washington areas.

Then comes Catholic League play, a test all on its own. West Catholic played four Catholic League games in eight days in January, losing three. But they were to Judge, Devon Prep (the defending 3A state champ), and Roman.

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“We play in a league where there are no nights off,” Bocachica said. “By the time we get to states, it’s like clockwork to us. By the time we get to states, we’re going all over the state to play games, and it’s just another road game to us. It’s just something you kind of get used to.”

At practice, Bocachica is as active as his players. Those who are not participating in a defensive drill stand on one baseline and chant, “Defense! Defense!” at those on the floor. The gym is tiny, with only four rows of seats on four sides. It quickly becomes filled with sound.

“We used to be an easy win for the other teams in the league, and that’s changed,” he said. “If we do win a state title this year, we’ll be ahead of schedule.”

He reached for a box score on his desk. It was from West Catholic’s 83-55 victory over Deer Lake in the 2023 state final. Seniors Adam “Budd” Clark, who would go to Merrimack College, scored 32 points for the Burrs, and Zion Stanford, now at Temple, added 30 points.

Although that 2023 team lost 10 games overall, it did get to the Catholic League semifinals at the Palestra, where it lost to Neumann Goretti. These Burrs have also been tempered by pounding into the big teams in the league, many of whom are still playing ball.

Williams said of Bocachica, “I knew he had the passion to develop the program at the beginning. I knew he had the ability to lead.”

West Catholic, he said, is not the type of school that tries to sell itself to potential players; the Burrs (who got their nickname because the 1918 football team had a stick-to-it tenacity) still need to develop talent rather than just go out and grab top players.

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Now, Williams said, “We have kids who reach out to us at this point.”

Bocachica, who is a “behavior coach” at River Rock Academy in Delaware County, keeps several mementos from that 2023 season on the desk in his office at West Catholic, which he joked is usually even more cluttered “but looks a lot nicer.”

The pristine gym floor at West Catholic carries the skyline of Philadelphia on each sideline. West Catholic is not a Philadelphia basketball giant, and might not ever be. Sixty-six years after they last ruled over the Catholic League, the Burrs are still a determined team.

“We’re a small school — that’s why we’re underdogs,” Byrd said.