In Tuesday night’s big win over Abington Council Rock North senior Aaron Morgan surpassed the 1,000-point plateau.
Derek Wright knew he was onto something special when Aaron Morgan stepped onto the court as a raw but talented freshman.
“I remember telling him we were pretty much going to give him the keys to the offense, and we would probably lose some games early on because he was a freshman, but we were putting the ball in his hands,” the Council Rock North coach said.
“He told me my freshman year, ‘You have the keys to my car. Don’t crash it,’” Morgan recalled. “I knew the next four years it would be mine, and I had to make the best out of it.
“Freshman year I had troubles – every freshman has them, but you have to live through them. Coach really believed in me, so that helped too.”
Wright recognized there would be a payoff for Morgan’s early struggles.
“We didn’t win games, but we knew in the long run it would be great for him and great for us,” the Indians’ coach said. “He really worked on his skills and took a lot of pride in his work ethic, and he became a better player. Halfway through his sophomore season, he turned the corner.”
Did he ever.
With Morgan at the point, the Indians won back-to-back SOL National Conference titles, and they hold a two-game advantage in the conference standings this season with five league games remaining. Last year, the Indians won 27 games and advanced to the district title game as well as the PIAA Class AAAA state quarterfinals.
“A lot of that is because of Aaron,” Wright said.
In Tuesday night’s scintillating come-from-behind win over Abington, Morgan reached a personal milestone when – with 26.2 seconds remaining in the first half, he capped a personal 7-0 run by burying a step-back jumper that vaulted him to the magical 1,000-point plateau.
“To know all the hard work that I put in through the years – it finally paid off,” he said. “It was a special day.”
The accomplishment became especially sweet after the Indians, who trailed by double digits early, rallied for the big win.
“It was special because when I got it we were down, but I knew we could do it,” said Morgan, who finished the game with 18 points. “We have the pieces to finish games and come back on teams like that. Abington is a real good team, but we just had to play the way we should play – pass the ball, defend, rebound, and we weren’t really doing that much in the first half. In the second half, we did better, and I think that helped us make shots on the offensive end.”
Wright pulled Morgan aside at Saturday’s practice to let him know he was just 10 points away from the milestone. If he hadn’t, Morgan would have figured it out from the response of the Rock North fans, who counted down in anticipation of the historical basket.
“I had it in the back of my mind the past few days, and I wanted to get it over with,” Morgan said.
Basketball has been part of the senior captain’s life for as long as he can remember.
“I’ve been playing since I could walk,” he said. “I had a little Fischer-Price net, and when I was big enough, I played with a 10-foot net.
“Basketball is in my blood. My dad played, so he passed it on to me, and I’ve loved it ever since.”
Morgan initially caught Wright’s eye because of his athleticism.
“Just his quickness, his strength and his ability to get up and down the floor at a real fast pace – we knew that he would be special,” the Indians’ coach said. “There also was a toughness about him and a competitiveness about him that we really liked.
“You can’t really teach a young man that early on how to play tough and how to compete. He had that from the start. We just had to channel it in a positive way.
“To his credit, he was very comfortable dealing with our constructive criticism and turned that edge into a positive one. A lot of credit goes to his family as well.”
These days, Wright refers to Morgan as the Indians’ ‘engine.’
“We go as he goes,” Rock North’s coach said. “He’s matured into a point guard that we trust.
“He does so much. We depend on his energy. When he brings energy on both ends of the floor and is really focused, he makes everyone around him better. He recognizes that and puts that responsibility on himself.”
While some point guards simply direct their team’s offense, Morgan is an integral part of the Indians’ offensive game plan, and he is equally comfortable taking the ball to the hole or pulling up for a jumper.
“He’s a scoring point guard,” Wright said. “That’s his MO. There are point guards that distribute and run the offense and are real solid in that way, but he can score at the point like not a lot of people can, and that’s something the next level really likes about him.
“He can create his own shots and he can create shots for other people. We actually try to get him off the ball too because of his talents. Matt McCloskey and Rip Engel really help him do that.”
Morgan’s accomplishment gives the Indians two thousand-point scorers on the floor each night as he joins teammate Arron Goodman, who reached that milestone last season. Both players have accepted full scholarships to compete at the collegiate level – Morgan will be playing at UMBC while Goodman will take his talents to Philadelphia University.
“He’s become so confident in himself, in his teammates,” Goodman said of Morgan. “He’s always been such a talented player, but all the little things really made him a great player. He worked so hard on his game.”
Morgan is just the 11th male athlete in the 56-year history of Council Rock to reach the 1,000-point mark.
“Basketball was always just a game,” he said. “I never would have thought I could have surmounted that – a thousand points is a big thing to pass.
“Only a few people do it, so I felt special and honored to do it.”
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