Can Anyone Beat Neumann-Goretti, The Nation's No. 1 Team?
PHILADELPHIA, PA (CBS) — They're 26-0 and look almost impossible to beat. Okay, right now the way they're playing, the Neumann-Goretti girls are impossible to beat. The Saints have devoured their last two opponents, Philadelphia Public League champ Imhotep Charter and Trinity High School, by a combined 148-65. The Saints are the nation's No. 1 team—and have become increasingly more dangerous as the season winds down and they play for their destiny—a PIAA Class AA state championship, and the unofficial national championship along with it.
"We're starting to play the way we're able to play, we had to get our swag back," said the Saints' Towson-bound senior guard Sianni Martin, who scored a game-high 19 in Neumann Goretti's 71-28 victory in last Saturday's District 12 Class AA championship—when the Saints outscored Imhotep Charter 47-7 in the second half. "In the beginning of the year, when we played the top teams in Maryland and Virginia, this is the way we played. We blew so many teams out, we lost a little cohesion. I think we've played down to other teams, like (Archbishop) Carroll and (Archbishop) Wood, and when we saw the competition come up, we stepped up. This win was huge for us. We're getting back to the way we're supposed to be playing."
Saints' coach Andrea Peterson sees her team now settling down. The Saints shot 10-for-37 in the first half against Imhotep, and then couldn't seem to miss in the second half. Against Trinity in the opening round of the PIAA Class AA state playoffs, the Saints led from start to finish.
"I think what you saw against Imhotep was Neumann-Goretti basketball and I think it shows why we're the No. 1 team in the country," Peterson said. "Imhotep has a very nice, athletic team. They're a problem for anyone who faces them. But I think how we played in the second half shows what we're able to do. We're coming together now. We're playing the way we can play."
Since scoring a season-low 40 points in the Catholic League semifinals over Carroll, Neumann-Goretti has outscored its last three opponents, including beating Wood in the Catholic League finals, 198-110, averaging 66 points a game.
During the season, the Saints have outscored their opponents, 1,751 to 844, which averages out to 67.3 points a game, while giving up an average of a mere 32.4. It's among the largest scoring disparities in the country—and that's with Peterson playing her starters just over a half in about half the games this season. The Saints have scored as much as 103 points in a game, and the most they gave up was 60, in a 76-60 victory over Shipley on January 10. Since then, no team has scored more than 45 against Neumann-Goretti.
"We really have had to find our rhythm again, because we haven't been playing that much together," Martin said. "We could have scored far more points than we did this season. But Coach Peterson didn't want to run up the scores on a lot of the teams we played. Now it's the state playoffs. Teams will get a chance to see what we're fully capable of doing. We can't wait."