PIAA boys’ basketball finals: Sankofa Freedom and Devon Prep each take home state titles

Three months ago, Devon Prep coach Jason Fisher had a genuine, dire fear his team would not win a game this season.

The defending PIAA Class 4A state champion Tide started the season 0-5, improved to 1-7, and were 2-14 in mid-January, playing in the Catholic League.

On Thursday night, in the bowels of Hershey’s Giant Center, Fisher’s team raised their third-straight state championship trophy, repeating as Class 4A champions with a harder-than-it-looked 58-41 victory over District 8 champion Obama Academy.

The Tide completed an improbable journey as three-peat state champions, winning consecutive state titles, after a 2024 Class 3A state championship and winning their fourth state title in five years (winning the 2022 Class 3A state championship).

On the Tide’s five-game roll to three-peating, they beat four district champions (11-1 Allentown Central Catholic, 2-1 Scranton Prep, 4-1 Lewisburg, and 8-1 Obama Academy). The Tide were the No. 4 seed out of District 12, with half their victories coming in the state tournament to finish 10-18 overall.

It will be interesting for generations to come when they look at Devon Prep’s 2026 state championship team photo and not think the postscript at the bottom was a typo when it reads “Record: 10-18.”

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Just like many across the state thought it was a typo when the state playoff brackets came out reading: District 12 No. 4 seed Devon Prep (5-18). How does a 5-18 team win a state championship?

They qualify for the state playoffs. The Tide were the fourth of five District 12 teams that qualified for states, with two qualifiers coming from the powerful Catholic League, District 12 champion Archbishop Carroll, which was upset by District 3 No. 2-seed Bishop McDevitt in the second round, and Devon Prep, which had to beat Conwell-Egan to be the second Catholic League team to qualify.

Devon Prep is one of the smaller schools in the Catholic League, and its schedule featured three defending state champions in the Catholic League alone (6A Father Judge, 5A Neumann Goretti, and 3A West Catholic), plus 2026 state 5A finalist Bonner-Prendie, and eventual state champion (1A Sankofa Freedom).

Fisher did an amazing job keeping a group together that did not fracture under a wealth of losing.

“We lost everyone from last year, and there was a genuine concern we wouldn’t win a game this year,” Fisher said. “I didn’t want to change our schedule we played, because our nonleague schedule was really good. This was a whole new team, and you don’t know how long it would take for them to put it together. We kept the focus on continuing to get better and keep it positive. Through the first month of the year, we were getting better and growing, but we definitely did not think we would win a game this year.

“This year tested everything you learn as a coach. You have to look at things in manageable pieces, with giving our players little goals that we felt we could achieve.”

Like scheduling Scranton Prep at Liberty High School in a tournament in early December (73-58 Scranton Prep victory), and then telling his team one of their goals this season was to be back in the same locker room in March in the state playoffs.

The Tide achieved that, beating Scranton Prep in the state quarterfinals, 62-55.

Pieces started merging. Jaden Craft led the way, as the junior scored a team-high 21 points in the state championship on 5 of 10 shooting. Johnnie Doogan, the son of O’Hara girls’ coach Chrissie Doogan, exploded to average 20.8 points a game during the state playoffs, up from his season average of eight points a game. The junior finished with 14 points and fellow junior Cooper Fairlamb added 12, with senior Braeden Fisher, Jason Fisher’s son, pulling down a team-high nine rebounds.

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“We’ve been underrated all season, and no one really expected us to win the state championship,” said Craft, a three-time state champion. “Our coaches stressed to us to never to look at our record and continue improving. We play monsters in the Catholic League and each game prepared us for what we would face in the state playoffs. We learned with each loss. There was never any doubt we would get back again. We never got down on ourselves.”

The state title game was a microcosm of the Tide’s season. They started in a 4-0 hole, turning the ball over three times, before going on a 13-0 run to control the game. The Eagles (20-10) played catchup the rest of the way, getting within 47-41 with 1:30 to play, before they were pressed to foul.

As a team, Devon Prep shot 50% (17-for-34), including a remarkable 70.6% in the first half (12 of 17), while holding Obama Academy to 27.7% (13-for-47) shooting and 1-for-14 from three-point range.

“Yeah, we all had our doubts especially after that start,” Doogan said. “We just trusted our coach and kept improving day by day. Got some big wins late in PCL play and kept that energy with us going into states. We grew a lot as a team throughout the season and developed a chemistry that we definitely did not have earlier in the season. We trusted in each other.”

It was a pain that the Sankofa Freedom team carried for a year.

The Warriors reached the PIAA Class 1A state finals last season, only to lose to District 7 champion Neighborhood Academy. What collectively gnawed at the Warriors was that they felt the game was not a true reflection of how good they were. The nucleus of this year’s Sankofa Freedom team felt obligated to amend that.

On Thursday, the Warriors did, avenging their loss to Neighborhood Academy, 55-52, in a rematch of last year’s PIAA Class 1A championship behind a team-high 18 points from senior forward Nafis Dubose for Sankofa Freedom (23-8), supported by an overall strong game from junior Samad Geary-West, who finished with nine points, a game-high 10 rebounds, and two steals, and senior guard Nasir Brown’s 15 points on 4 of 9 shooting.

It’s the second state title for Sankofa Freedom, coached by Isaiah Thomas, an at-large member of Philadelphia City Council. Thomas directed the 2019 Warriors team to the Class 1A state championship.

This 2026 team may be Thomas’ best.

“Honestly, the first state in 2019 is the first one, it will always be special to me because it was the first state title the school has ever won, but the truth is, this feels better,” Thomas said. “That 2019 team won every game by large margins. This means more because every game was tight. We won one game in overtime.

“As coaches, this is more special because more coaching and strategy were involved. When you are beating everyone by double-digits, that is a skill thing. But when you win the way we did, it takes the entire collective. It’s coaching, it’s parents, it’s athletic directors, and mostly it’s the kids. There was much more involved, because it was way more difficult.”

Dubose was the heart and soul of the Warriors. For inspiration, Thomas actually showed his team clips of the plays Dubose made during the course of the season. It was Dubose that got the Warriors going on a 7-0 run that gave Sankofa Freedom control of the game early in the fourth quarter.

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“Last year was motivation for this year,” Dubose said. “I still can’t believe we won it. We wanted revenge. I got in foul trouble last year, and we weren’t making free throws. This time, we attacked and got to the rim. We never panicked. Everyone believed we could do this and we did. They hit some tough shots. But we knew they could not keep that up.”

A couple of key factors: Sankofa Freedom forced 16 Neighborhood Academy (25-4) turnovers and scored 17 points off turnovers to Neighborhood Academy’s 5. The Warriors also got to the line 31 times to Neighborhood Academy’s 12, sinking 23 free throws. It was Geary-West who scored four of the Warriors’ last eight points, with an exclamation point slam dunk with 1:26 to play, giving Sankofa Freedom a 51-47 lead.

“The whole idea was to attack,” Geary-West said. “This was a revenge tour for us, and for me personally. They tried to pack it with a zone and came after them in the second half. I’ll remember this game and these guys for the rest of my life.”