Quince Orchard falls to top-seeded Magruder, 47-30, in regional finals

The Quince Orchard High School boys’ basketball team won a game it wasn’t supposed to Tuesday night. Playing in the Class 4A Regional semifinals, the Cougars rode a furious late-game comeback to topple No. 2-seed Winston Churchill by five points.

So when No. 3-seed Quince Orchard took the Montgomery Blair High School basketball court Friday night against top-seeded and defending state champion Col. Zadak Magruder High School, it was a decided underdog. It showed too, as the Colonels dominated the undersized Cougars en route to a lopsided 47-30 victory.

“We’re young, we haven’t experience this, we had a Cinderella season, and coming here, we kind of fell our way,” Coach Paul Foringer said. “Being on this stage might be a little too much for us.”

In the first quarter, Quince Orchard failed to make a basket, and a free throw from senior guard Charles Porter would be the only points it scored in the frame.

The Cougars didn’t net their first field goal until the 7:26 mark of the second quarter, allowing Magruder to jump out to a commanding 15-3 lead early on.
“One of the things we talked about coming into the game was taking good shots and not wasting our opportunities,” Foringer said. “And some of the things I saw in the first quarter, I haven’t seen on a playground. It was all just crap.”

His team’s luck wouldn’t get much better from there. The Colonels stayed hot through the rest of the first half, and five unanswered points from guard JJ Epps sent Magruder into the break with a 28-11 lead they would never relinquish.

The Cougars scored the first two baskets of the second half to cut their deficit to 13 points, but that’s the closest they would get as the Colonels coasted into next weekend’s state semifinals.

“We didn’t score. That’s why we were never in it,” Foringer said. “It wasn’t that our defense was terrible. They probably had more turnovers tonight than they normally do. Defensively, we probably did a good job. But when you fall behind by so many, everybody looks at your defense.”

Charles Porter tried to keep his team in it offensively, but he wasn’t enough all by himself. The senior guard scored 13 of the team’s 30 points, including 8 of their 9 fourth-quarter points.

But the rest of the Cougars couldn’t match his effort in the 17-point blowout.
“We can’t keep up with their scoring. We can’t score against them,” Foringer said. “We had the opportunities, we just didn’t make the shots.”

The loss ends what had been an impressive season. Quince Orchard finished its season 18-7 and made a run to the regional finals, a noteworthy accomplishment for a school better known for its prowess on the football field.

Foringer said as much after the game. He didn’t seem angry at the loss or sad that his team’s season was over. He knew what happened on the court. His players just had to accept it and grow from it.

“It was kind of like David and Goliath,” Foringer said. “Only David forgot to bring his sling.”