New-look St. Joe’s Prep shows it’s still a Catholic League contender
After Tristen Guillouette was denied a fifth year of eligibility by the PIAA, the Hawks had to adjust their style. And early on, the team hasn’t missed a beat.
St. Joseph’s Prep had to make a major adjustment to its plans and style this fall. And early on, it’s looking like the Prep hasn’t missed a beat.
Through two games of the season, head coach Jason Harrigan’s Hawks have looked like a squad capable of competing for a Philadelphia Catholic League basketball title.
They went toe-to-toe with Imhotep on the road before knocking off one of the best teams in Ohio, Richmond Heights, on Sunday at the Kobe Bryant Classic.
“We might have lost arguably, in my opinion, the best big around, but we’re still a great team,” junior guard Olin Chamberlain Jr. said. “We’re still ready for war, we’re ready for any team you throw in front of us. These games coming up, the games we just played, we just want to prove that we can still hang and have people stop overlooking us, that we’re still a great team.”
The Hawks looked ready in the offseason to leap into the upper echelon of the PCL after a fifth-place finish a year ago. Tristen Guillouette was the centerpiece surrounded by a group of sharpshooting and athletic ballhandlers who all have college scholarship offers.
Then the center was denied a fifth year of eligibility by the PIAA, forcing Guillouette to play the 2023-24 season elsewhere.
“All summer I thought we’re about to be this big team, about to be this great team, and when that kind of happened, I was in shock,” Chamberlain said. “I heard little whispers and stuff of it, but I honestly didn’t really know.”
That forced the Hawks to make a major shift. For two years, Harrigan’s attack was built around his guards and the 6-foot-9 Guillouette, whose two-way presence kept getting more impactful since arriving from Life Center Academy (Burlington, N.J.) in 2021.
Now, Harrigan had a rotation full of guards — really, really, good guards. So he took it and ran with it, literally.
“The speed of the game changed,” Harrigan said.
“We had to redevelop our whole play style, you could say, and we felt that some people kind of wrote us off,” senior guard Matt Gorman said. “We worked extremely hard to get back to what we thought we were last year. I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”
The Hawks came out of the gates with a clear indication that they weren’t going anywhere, leading Imhotep for most of the way before UConn-bound Ahmad Nowell put the Panthers on his back to keep their 80-game home winning streak alive with a 77-70 win.
It wasn’t a win, but it was a warning. Then watching Prep outlast Richmond Heights, 75-64, it was tough to believe that they’d ever played with a big man.
“We’re all starting to buy in and really understand each other and really start to figure out who we are,” Chamberlain said. “[With] five guards, we’ve got to play a lot faster, we’ve got to trust each other more, we’ve got to play way harder on defense.”
“Jaron [McKie], Olin [Chamberlain], Jordan [Ellerbee], Jalen [Harper], and Matt [Gorman], they’ve all found different opportunities in which they lead us,” Harrigan said. “And they know it’s going to fall on their shoulders. Collectively as a group, they’re just all picking up the slack.”
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The Richmond Heights game was also a chance to see how they fared against a quality big man. Spartans sophomore T.J. Crumble is an ESPN top 20 prospect in the class of 2026. He’s a versatile and mobile 6-foot-8 forward with offers from Ohio State, LSU, and a dozen other high-major programs.
Crumble, though, was far from dominant. The Hawks constantly fronted the post and kept bodies moving to limit his touches, then took advantage of mismatches on the other end.
If St. Joe’s Prep wants to beat the likes of Thomas Sorber and Archbishop Ryan, amongst other powerhouse teams in the league, its going to need similar efforts all year long.
They’ve got state quarterfinalist Coatesville on Saturday in the Diane Mosco Classic at Archbishop Wood, then a visit from Bishop Ireton (Md.) the day after, and a trip to Tampa at the end of the month.
“It’s two pretty good teams that we played in back-to-back weeks,” Gorman said. “This one right here shows everyone that we’re still here, we still have an opportunity to take this thing deep.”
This story was produced as part of a partnership between The Inquirer and City of Basketball Love, a nonprofit news organization that covers high school and college basketball in the Philadelphia area while also helping mentor the next generation of sportswriters. This collaboration will help boost coverage of the city’s vibrant amateur basketball scene, from the high school ranks up through the Big 5 and beyond.