Liberty and Whitehall shine; set up an entertaining final

FROM Keith Groller

Good night of basketball Wednesday night at Freedom; and a very good crowd.

Much better atmosphere than we had at Allen on Tuesday.

And before I get too deep into this post, kudos to all of the athletic directors involved for staying on top of their student sections when bad things came out of their mouths.

As you know, I like to see large student sections at these games and believe they greatly enhance the atmosphere at these games. Whitehall, in particular, has had some great student sections this year.

But as kids are known to do, sometimes they make mistakes, and some inappropriate things come out of their mouths and when they did, the ADs halted those inappropriate things as quickly as possible before the kids caused embarrassment to their schools.

No need to get into who said what. Just compliments to the ADs for taking care of this stuff as soon as possible.

Speaking of taking care of business, both Whitehall and Liberty did that. Both were very impressive.

These two met last summer in the Allentown Summer League championship game and I thought they would meet in the LVC finals a couple of weeks ago, but both failed to play well in the semis.

Taking away nothing from Nazareth, which has been nothing short of sensational since the last week of the regular season, Liberty -- when fully intact -- is the best team. They just have too many weapons. the Blue Eagles missed a lot of easy shots, to be sure, on Wednesday, but the athleticism of Liberty and its tenacity on the boards wears on you after awhile.

"Everybody went hard and we came out with fire, looking for revenge," said Darrun Hilliard after his 26-point performance, which began with a 3-pointer on Liberty's first possession. "I tried to get out fast. I tried to get myself into the game right away and then get my teammates going and put them on my back."

Hilliard admitted though that it's a different team with Anthony Gonzalez back.

"It's hard to win without Ant," Hilliard said. "Without him, me and Jarrod [West] tried to put the team on our backs and carry us to wins. But it's an entirely different team with him back. He talks on defense and just provides leadership. He does the little things we need to put us on top. I call him smooth because he's real soft-spoken. But when you're slacking, he'll let you know."

As for the first game, one of the best things about high school sports is seeing someone seize their moment.

Travis Cheeks did that.

He has been a part of the program for four years and was a starter for two years. But the emergence of Javier Rivera sent Cheeks to a backup role.

He said he wasn't happy with that at first, but came to accept it and appreciate the quickness and energy Rivera brought to the team.

But with Rivera out on Wednesday night after some major dental surgery earlier in the week, Cheeks (No. 21, right) came through with a performance of a lifetime -- scoring 12 points, including 10 in the second half when Whitehall played about as well as it has all season.

Coach Jeff Jones said he was happy for Cheeks after the game, but not surprised he delivered that kind of performance.



"I felt great for him," Jones said. "He didn't know he was going to be starting until about 5 o'clock. He has been in that situation before. We didn't worry about him. It just concerned us because it affected our rotations off the bench."

Jones also noted the efforts of Cory Cesare and Nathan Keglovits off the bench. Both haven't played that much, but more than held their own. Keglovits even chipped in a key field goal.

The regulars -- Patrick Bet, Bobby Beldo (No. 45 on the right), Matt Greene and Chris Astacio -- all had their moments. All had to work hard on the boards against the very athletic Cardinals, who played so well in stretches and then got too sloppy in others.



Rivera was heartbroken he couldn't play. He wasn't even allowed to be at the game on Wednesday night. His status for Saturday is uncertain.

Either way, this should be a competitive game. I covered the regular season matchup between the two and Whitehall's matchup zone was very effective that night. Liberty won 33-30 back on Jan. 5, but it was a struggle offensively for both teams.

Keith Grollrt