Fran O'Hanlon, who steered Bonner to
 the 1988 CL championship, has long
been the coach at Lafayette College.
-----

Monsignor Bonner's Three CL Basketball Champs in 1980s
 
  This story was written after the Friars broke a 23-year drought by trouncing Judge, 73-53, for the Catholic League championship . . .

By Ted Silary
  Monsignor Bonner's players figured something special was in the works when they gathered in the Palestra's southeast locker room at 8:35 last night and took note that Coach Ed Stefanski was using a normal speaking voice.
  Stefanski speaks in a normal voice to his players - at least when the subject is anything remotely resembling basketball - less often than Bonner wins the championship.
  Before last night, when the Friars swamped Father Judge, 73-53, before 3,987 for the Catholic League championship, the school had won the big one just once . . . all the way back in 1960.
  Afterward, Stefanski decided to use a normal speaking voice just once to tell his players he was stepping down after four years.
  "He walked in and got us together," said Jack Concannon, the 6-5 forward who overachieves on so many occasions, perhaps he's not overachieving at all. ''He said he didn't want to tell us back then, but he'd decided to resign in the middle of the season. Then he said, 'I'm glad you guys won it . . . thanks a lot . . . I really appreciate it. ' "
  Since it wasn't late afternoon, Stefanski couldn't kiss the nearest pretty woman, spin on the heels of his cowboy boots (which he wasn't wearing anyway) and ride off into the sunset.
  No. 1, "Shot" still must coach Bonner (25-6) next week in the prestigious Alhambra Catholic Invitational at Frostburg (Md. ) State.
  No. 2, when you're standing ankle- deep in tears of joy mixed with shower water, and people are pounding you continually on the back and/or pumping your hand, you tend not to leave in a hurry.
  Stefanski jokingly wondered earlier this season why his players never called him "Coach," figuring that maybe they held the opinion he would be better off trying his drawing hand at doodlings rather than X's and O's.
  But make no doubt. "Shot" did a splendid job in righting a ship that had veered 'way off course by Jan. 7, the night the Friars lost to West Catholic and fell to 11-4 overall.
  Stefanski was Bonner's captain in 1972 before playing for Penn. This year, the current Friars often thought of him as Captain Bligh.
  "I bit my tongue 100 times (during practices)," said a laughing Concannon, who shot 7-for-9 and 7-for-8 for 21 points and grabbed 15 rebounds. ''He's a madman, he's nuts, but he makes you a better player and every time he hollers, he's only doing it for your own good. "
  Let's backtrack a little. Concannon bit his tongue only 99 times.
  "Yesterday," Jack said, "I made him hot. I messed up something in practice. He asked me what I'd done wrong and I gave him a wise answer. I don't mean to talk back to him . . . but sometimes I do it anyway. He told me to go sit on the side for a while.
  "He doesn't think I listen to him. He'll say something and ask, 'Hear me? ' Then he'll say again, 'Hear me? ' Then he'll say, 'Jaaacck! '
  "I don't mind hearing his stuff in practice," Concannon added, laughing again, "but it's different when we're playing a game. I'm too much involved in what I'm doing. "
  Concannon wasn't the only Friar who put together a too-much performance to dismantle a team that had been playing sparkling ball for more than a month.
 
  continued right below . . .  

Rodney Blake

By Ted Silary
  Monsignor Bonner's bulge once stood at 14 points in Saturday's Catholic League basketball championship game, but with just under six minutes left, it was melting as fast as a ball of ice in July.
  Metaphor-wise, we easily could have taken the butter-in-a-frying-pan route, or even the cake-left-out-in-the-rain route. We went with ice in July, however, for a reason.
  Rod Blake scored 23 points, Steve Eilola grabbed 11 rebounds and Dave Koskinen combined 14 points with four assists as Bonner defeated La Salle, 58-56, to win its second consecutive title before a don't-tell-the-fire-marsha l overflow crowd at St. Joseph's Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse.
  If they were the three main contributing factors to the Friars' win, and La Salle's poor foul shooting (8-for-15) and a last-second miss (by John Zamichieli, following Larry Guess's steal) were Nos. 4 and 5, it's within the realm of possibility to say a ball of ice checked in at No. 6.
  The ice, which was whipped floorward from the top portion of La Salle's student rooting section as Bonner worked for a shot, crash-landed with 5:35 left and referee Joe DeMayo immediately hit the Explorers with a technical foul.
  Soph Ed McCrystal converted the free throw, soph Lenny Lynch made two more after drawing a shooting foul on the inbounds play, and the Friars (27-4) were breathing a lot easier at 50-44 than they were at 47-44.
  Was the technical foul the reason Bonner won? Of course not. But it's a shame it wound up being a reason, especially if the claims made afterward by La Salle athletic director Marty Stanczak - that the youngster who threw the ice was ushered out by security people and was not a student of either school - were factual.
  "It was probably unfair," said Bonner coach Art Hunter. "It seems to me games should be won or lost by what the players do, not by what the fans do. "
  "If it's a 10-point game, maybe you don't say anything," noted La Salle coach Les Burke. "But when it ends as a two-point game, you look at all the angles . . . I don't think that was fair. "
  "An announcement had been made about the throwing of objects," DeMayo said. "If it's a streamer, maybe we eat the announcement and start over. That was something that could have hurt the players, or my partner, or me. And how bad would I have felt if I'd let that go and then another one came down and hurt somebody? I feel sorry for Les Burke, but it was a judgment call. I'll assume the responsibility. "
  If Joe DeMayo felt a heavy burden afterward, think how Rod Blake felt - or how he should have felt - when he returned with 4:33 left, having watched, burdened with four personals, for almost seven minutes.
  The Friars led by a whopping 43-29 when he departed; by a miniscule 50-48 when he came back. At 3:49, Zamichieli would tie the score on a right-baseline jumper, but Blake scored the next five points by going 5-for-6 from the line.
  "I didn't think it would be on my shoulders," Blake said. "I felt we'd have to do it as a team. Sitting on the bench, looking at that (vanishing lead), I didn't feel too good. But I thought we could handle it OK because we did all right when I had to sit out the last three minutes of the first half. "
  "We wanted to hold Rod out until the five-minute mark," Hunter said. ''When it got around that point, my brother, Jimmy, said to call a timeout and get him back in there. We were thinking if the lead was four or six points, we would have been all right. "
  But the lead wasn't that big, mostly because of La Salle junior strongboys Craig Conlin and Tom Gizzi.
  Conlin appeared intimidated early by Blake's shot-blocking, but shot 7-for- 7 in the second half and finished with 20 points. Gizzi, who would take it to Kareem without a second thought, was steady throughout, finishing with 17 points and 10 boards.
After Blake hit a short field goal to give Bonner a 57-54 lead at 0:41, and Conlin was detected walking at 0:18, La Salle appeared to be in serious trouble. Jim Welde, who broke long on the inbounds play, then hit the second of a two-shot foul at 0:14 for a 58-54 lead and Guess answered with an in-the- lane bank shot at 0:09.
  The Explorers (19-10) got their timeout at 0:07. Eilola's inbounds pass to Welde was stolen by Guess on the left side of the lane and he fired a pass on the right side to Zamichieli. Zamichieli missed a half-layup, half-jumper and Eilola gained possession at the buzzer after some serious flailing by anywhere from five to seven hands.
  "We wanted to double-team the inbounds pass in hopes of getting a five- second call," Burke said. "We got better than that. We got the ball . . . "
  Unfortunately, more than five minutes earlier, La Salle also had gotten the short end of the ball-of-ice stick.
  TITLE TIDBITS: Steve Eilola's 11 rebounds represented a season high. He also couldn't remember previously going the distance: "That kid (Tom) Gizzi is supposed to be the strongest guy in the Northern Division. I thought I did well against him." . . . Bonner's Lenny Lynch and La Salle's Mark Basilii were the only subs . . . Bonner won the title last year under Ed Stefanski, who was a post-game locker-room visitor . . . Les Burke: "To come from 14 back - that shows we have some pride at La Salle." . . . Rod Blake: "The title you win as a senior is the one that means the most."

By Ted Silary
  Brian Daly walked off the Palestra floor at 3:40 yesterday afternoon feeling lighter than he had all season.
  No longer strapped to Daly's broad, sturdy back were the other members of Monsignor Bonner's basketball team. But draped around his neck was a net.
  Thankfully, it only weighed a couple of ounces.
  There are franchise players and then there are franchise players. Brian Daly, a 6-4 senior forward (who begs to be called 6-5), assuredly belongs in the italicized group.
  By the time Bonner (19-9) had bested defending champion North Catholic (21-7), 62-59, for its third Catholic League title in six years, Daly's name had become prominent in several sections of the league's postseason record book.
  Friday night, he had established a record for points in a league semifinal, with 28, as Bonner downed Roman Catholic, 66-59. Then yesterday - ultimately because of two technical foul shots he drained with 0:03 remaining, after North called a timeout it didn't have left - he claimed the record for most points in a final, with 30.
  The former recordholder in each case was St. Joseph's Prep superguard Maurice "Mo" Howard, who scored 27 and 29 points, respectively, in the '71 semi and final for coach Eddie Burke's triumphant Hawklets. Howard later played for Maryland and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
  Daly is now one of only four Catholic Leaguers to score 30 or more points in a playoff game. He also is tied for second with Howard, at 74, for points in a playoff series. Rodney Blake, holder of the No. 1 spot, had 75 (30-22-23) for Bonner's 1984 champions.
  Sorry for beating you over the head with so many numbers. But where Brian Daly is concerned, such an approach is virtually inescapable.
  "Except for someone about 6-11, I don't think I've ever seen anyone dominate games like Brian," said Fran O'Hanlon, Bonner's second-year coach. ''He flat-out did everything for us. "
  Daly, who finished with 1,253 career points, second to Blake (1,348) in Bonner history, shot 8-for-17 from the floor (two "threes") and 12-for-14 from the foul line.
  In Bonner's three playoff games, he shot 20-for-44 (three "threes") and 31-for-39 and grabbed 36 rebounds.
Yesterday, as you might expect, he also maintained a high crunch-time profile.
  With 0:04 left in the third period, senior guard Bill Pancoast hit a one- and-one to earn North, which had trailed for 13 1/2 minutes, a tie at 41-41. But as Bonner scored eight of the next nine points, Daly converted two one-and-ones to provide the first four.
  Then, with North still lurking nearby, at 54-52, Daly hit a short jumper at 1:37 to again create some distance.
  "He can put clouds in a sunshiny day," North coach Joe Rapczynski said.
  "All I wanted to do was win," Daly said. "If I had to score 30 points, that's what I had to do. "
  In scholastic sports, where petty jealousies can often fester, then mushroom out of control if not checked, it was fascinating this season to watch the interaction between Daly and his teammates.
  When the Friars needed points at key junctures, they seemed to say to Brian, "Take it and go do something . . . And we'll stay outta your way. "
  "I don't know what makes Brian play the way he does, but he does it over and over and over," said senior forward Ted Mulroy, who saved four of his eight points for the fourth quarter. "He's great. No one stops him from going to the basket. And if they somehow do, he just pops his jumper.
  "If Brian scores 20 and the other frontcourt guys (Mulroy, Dan Summers, reserve Tom Fitzpatrick) get maybe 8, 8 and 8, that's fine. Sure, we'd like to score more. But I'd take less recognition and win a game, any day. "
  Daly's 74 points accounted for 38.1 percent of the 194 Bonner scored in the playoffs. Did someone say, "Could you imagine where we'd be without him? "
  "These are special kids, winners," O'Hanlon said. "They're able to put (jealousies) aside. They'd kid Brian - 'Geez, you take a lot of shots' - but they'd also hear me saying, 'Brian, take all the shots. '
  "They probably got tired of me saying, 'Brian, Brian, Brian. ' But these kids wanted to win. They had confidence that I was telling them the right things. And they had confidence in Brian, that when we needed a basket, he would get it. "
  As for the ever-burning question - Will Brian Daly get a Division I scholarship? - his chances appear to be slowly improving. Loyola (Baltimore) and Hartford have started to show interest, though none has been forthcoming from the three Division I city schools - St. Joseph's, La Salle, Drexel - that probably could use him.
  Agreed, he's not a jack rabbit. But name one player all year who was able to stop him.
  In 14 division games, Daly averaged more points (24) against the other three South playoff teams (Roman, West, Neumann) than he did overall (22.5), and proved that the supposedly superior athleticism of those teams' players fazed him not at all.
  Additionally, he scored a school-record 35 at West and had 20 in a half at Roman. So much for coming unglued in unfamiliar surroundings.
  "Division I ball is what I've always dreamed about," Daly said. "If it takes going to Maryland or Connecticut to play it, that's what I'll do. I'd love to stay here, but . . . "
  Despite losing its own main man, 6-5 senior Jim Schultice, to fouls with 0:31 left (he sat out from 7:11 to 4:21), North did not go easily.
  At 0:11, senior guard Tim Comey buried a right-wing "three" to cut Bonner's lead to 59-56. Daly made a front end at 0:09 to make it 60-56, but again the Falcons got a "three," this time from senior swingman Marc Alicea at 0:03. As North's players screamed for a timeout, the referees obliged them, momentarily forgetting that Rapczynski had used his allotted five.
Daly strolled to the other end and made the "T's," then senior guard Ron Zuccato dribbled away the final ticks.
  One by one, the players took turns cutting down the net at the Palestra's west end.
  And if you can't guess who snipped the final loop, forget basketball and become a badminton buff.
  TITLE TIDBITS: Neumann's Marty Campbell (32 in '79), Dougherty's Paul Terrell (30 in '74) and Rodney Blake (30 in '84) also scored 30 or more points in Catholic League playoff games. Their efforts came in first-round games . . . Jim Schultice had 19 points and 14 rebounds in his first foulout of the season . . . North will participate Thursday through Saturday in the Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament at Frostburg (Md. ) State . . . Bonner's Tom Fitzpatrick, battling a sprained ankle, had nine rebounds . . . North coach Joe Rapczynski: "The fact that we lost doesn't make this anything less than a great season."