Aces' Streak Ends in Neshaminy

After a month of having all the right moves in crunch time, the Aces reverted to their old form Friday night at Neshaminy, and fell 64-61 in the quarterfinal round of the District 1 playoffs. The loss not only snapped a nine game winning streak, but robbed the Aces of an opportunity to play in the District semifinals at Villanova.

"Disappointing," sighed crestfallen Lower Merion center Darryl Reynolds after the game, shaking his head. "Winning Districts was the ultimate goal."

Though they were a hairsbreadth away from that ultimate goal, mental lapses undid them.

After Darius Hall drained a three from the top of the key with 25 seconds left to cut the Redskin lead to 60-59, the most egregious of these lapses began. First the Aces allowed Neshaminy's sharpshooting Ryan Arcidiacono, who led all scorers with 33, to catch the subsequent inbound pass and immediately fouled him.

"We said don't foul [Arcidiacono]," explained a frustrated Ace head coach Gregg Downer after the game.

Then after watching Arcidiacono hit both free throws to push the lead to 62-59, the Aces bungled their next possession. Eighteen seconds of indecisive dribbling was punctuated by a heavily contested Mike Buchwald three point attempt, which the senior airballed.

"We were hoping to get something to the hole, then kick it out, but Darius got clogged up," said Downer. "And they sort of panicked."

Buchwald's miss was not an aberration. The Aces struggled from the perimeter throughout, a problem their opponent emphatically didn't suffer from. While the Aces made ample plays in transition, in the paint, and from midrange --Darius Hall, Mike Robbins, and Eric Green each scored 13 points, most of them in close proximity to the net-- eventually their inability to connect from outside, and the sheer amount of possessions they squandered trying to get that facet of their game going, burned them.

To say Lower Merion went 3-for-15 from three doesn't quite capture the extent of their troubles: they missed badly, and missed just as often inside the arc as out.

"The whole game felt choppy offensively. There was a lot of physicality," Downer said.

The Redskins meanwhile got four threes from Arcidiacono alone; amongst them an NBA length swish to close the first period and another in the face of airtight defense by Colin Eisenstaedt to tie the score at the end of the third.

"The kid is so good, it's kind of like a boxing match," Downer said, adding the Aces played a triangle and two defense most of the second half to combat him. It didn't work.

While the Arcidiacono's perimeter success eventually created interior opportunities for his teammates, the Aces suffered from the opposite effect: after three quarters of watching the Aces miss from anything outside 15 feet, the Redskins stopped devoting resources to guarding the outside and collapsed around the paint. The Aces offense collapsed along with them.

It was a tough loss for a team that hasn't had one since January.

"We were very excited about making it to 'Nova, getting a final four entry," Downer said, rejecting the notion that his Aces had let their guard down after clinching a state bid on Tuesday. "This will sting for awhile."