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By Brian Weaver
Maybe the crowd couldn’t see it. Maybe the players couldn’t see it.But Perry Engard saw it. The Souderton coach saw that the tide was turning, that it was shifting in favor of the Indians even though they were behind. And it was the third quarter. And they’d only scored a dozen points so far.
Call him a prophet.
Despite trailing 17-12 in the third, the Indians (17-2 overall, 9-2 Suburban One League Continental) mustered enough offense to knock off defending conference champion Central Bucks South in a showdown for first place in the SOL Continental, 32-28.
The Titans led 14-12 at the half before coming out and hitting a free throw and a bucket to stretch their lead to five. But then South (13-6, 8-3) called a timeout. Engard used the opportunity to rally his troops.
“I told them that I could feel the momentum changing,” he said afterwards. “I said, ‘Don’t look at the scoreboard, I feel the game turning.’ They had just called timeout to set their defense up. I told [my players] that South could feel it too.”
Sure enough, Souderton slowly pulled out of its funk. The Indians scored 30 of the game’s last 41 points, none of them easily.
“For both teams, the ball wasn’t going in the bucket,” Engard said. “They have a nice defensive scheme, lots of continuity.” A.J. Picard, a recent inductee in the 1,000 point club at Souderton, had struggled like everybody else on the offensive side of things. But in the second half he turned on the jets, hitting a free throw to tie the game at 21 and draw the home side level before the Indians pulled away in the fourth quarter. Picard dropped seven of his eight points in that half.
The senior attributed his lower scoring total to a sound approach in the South defense, but part of the problem was that it also took him a half to remember why he played the game.
“At Hatboro I had zero points, and people said to me, ‘You don’t look you’re having fun out there,’” he recalled. “And I figured tonight when I was shooting free throws I’d just think about my Mom, who’s all about that stuff. I was just going to go out there and have fun.”
The fun and loose side of the game was almost buried in a very rough second half.
The physical contest negated one of South’s biggest weapons, Nick Joerger. A commanding presence, Joerger found himself in foul trouble early on. He sat down with two fouls with 4:50 to go in the first half. In the fourth quarter, he picked up his fourth foul with 6:18 to go. Despite coming back into the game, he was forced to play more timidly. He could take few of the chances that got him a pair of first quarter steals.
Offensively, Joerger still managed eight points, but South coach Jason Campbell wasn’t under any illusions as to what kind of offensive night both teams would have.
“We had some looks, wasted some lay-ups,” he shrugged afterwards. “Those are the things we need to knock down. [Joerger]’s certainly a difference up there, but they [the officials] let us play tonight. It was tough.”
A back-and-forth first half saw slim margins in favor of the Titans, but as Souderton slowly turned things around, South struggled to find an answer. As was the theme for most of the night, defense played a huge part, perhaps no sequence bigger than Jeff Bishop’s run at the start of the fourth quarter. 
On each South’s first two possessions of the quarter, Bishop blocked a shot. With the Indians up 25-22, he then sank a free throw, and followed that by laying in two more points to stretch the lead to 28-22.
Most of that he did while the Indians were missing starting point guard Nate Moyer, who missed a few minutes at the start of the quarter with an injury to his elbow. Bishop knew the gravity his performance held, especially in that kind of situation.
“It gave us confidence and energy,” he said. “Defensive stops motivate the offense.”
Engard couldn’t have been happier with Bishop’s play.
“Jeff is our last line of defense, and we’re comfortable with him back there,” he said. “He and Nate Moyer are the unsung heroes of this team.”
He also pointed out that Bishop’s cohort in the backcourt, Kyle Connolly, played the game with the flu. That kind of effort and desire weren’t lost on a coach who realized the pace the game would be slow from the opening minutes.
“These are the two best defensive teams in the conference,” Engard pointed out. “I told our guys at halftime that the toughest time to play defense is when you’re struggling offensively.”With three games left, Souderton officially controls its own destiny as it rides towards the last three games. As sole possessors of first place, the Indians can accomplish one of their preseason goals – stealing the league title.
“It’s not closed out,” Engard reminded everyone. “We still have three games to play. We have ten seniors, and they just look at this like we’re fortunate we have the opportunity in front of us for the first time to control our season.”
SOUDERTON 32, CENTRAL BUCKS SOUTH 28
Central Bucks South (28) – Sean Kummer 0 2-4 2; Justin Policare 4 0-0 9; Brian Doyle 1 0-0 2; Mike Pincus 2 0-0 5; Joe Maher 0 1-2 1; Nick Joerger 2 4-6 8; Matt Johns 0 1-4 1; Steve Schneider 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 9 8-16 28.
Souderton (32) – Jeff Bishop 2 1-2 7; Nate Moyer 2 4-4 8; M.Wonderling 1 0-0 2; Nate Lewis 1 3-5 5; A.J. Picard 2 4-7 8; Kyle Conolly 1 0-3 2; Anthony Sergio 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 9 12-21 32
Central Bucks South 6 8 8 6-28
Souderton 4 8 11 9-32
3-point goals: CB East – Pincus, Policare. Souderton – Bishop 2.
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