HAVERFORD, Pa. -- Langston Galloway walked off the court at Haverford College’s Calvin J. Gooding Arena on Wednesday night and smiled sheepishly.
Halil Kanacevic, who was on hand to watch one of his Saint Joseph’s University classmates, shook his head in mock disapproval.
It was opening night at the Delaware County Pro-Am Men’s Summer Basketball League and Galloway had just scored a game-high 22 points on seven three-pointers. He even had a ridiculous off-the-backboard alley oop to himself after a play was blown dead. That was the good part.
The not-quite-as-good part? His Radano & Associates team beat the Widener University squad they were playing by more than 50 points, 92-39, in the most lopsided of the nine games played at Haverford on Wednesday. Hence, the sheepish smiles and head-shaking.
“We went out there the first couple of minutes slow, just warming up with each other,” Galloway said. “Shoot, then we started getting warmed up and we got going.”
As the league progresses throughout the summer, Galloway will almost certainly have more challenging matchups. The Delco Pro-Am, after all, is filled with some of the area’s best college players, incoming freshmen, recent alums, NBA players and even crafty old-timers.
Playing against that kind of stiff competition will come in handy as Galloway -- along with Kanacevic and Ronald Roberts -- prepares for his senior season on a St. Joe’s team looking to bounce back from a disappointing 2012-13 campaign in which the Hawks settled for an NIT berth after being picked to win the Atlantic 10.
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“We’re the leaders on the team,” Galloway said. “They expect a lot out of us. We expect to go out every night, play hard and leave it all out there. If we do that, the outcomes will be the way we want.”
Galloway seemed to be in good spirits during the Delco Pro-Am’s chaotic opening night. He talked about getting back into shape and returning to Philly after just a few weeks home. He talked about trying to convince his coaches to set up a game in his home state of Louisiana next season. He talked about getting ready to go to Italy with his college teammates in August.
But mostly, he talked about trying to keep Phil Martelli encouraged during what’s been a very challenging time for the St. Joe’s coach. In the past couple of months, Martelli’s sister and sister-in-law died, his mother broke her hip and his son Jimmy resigned from Rutgers in the wake of the Mike Rice coaching scandal.
“I stay in his ear constantly,” Galloway said. “I tell him ‘Anything you need, I’m here.’ It’s been getting better for him. May and June were pretty tough. But now it’s the end of June and it’s about to be July, and he’s been feeling a lot better.”
Galloway said he also keeps in contact with C.J. Aiken, who decided to forgo his senior season at St. Joe’s to pursue a professional basketball career. Along with Carl Jones, the Hawks’ high-scoring senior guard, St. Joe’s will lose two big pieces to their starting lineup next season.
But Galloway believes the Hawks will be better, despite those losses.
“It might help us in the long run,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Penn’s rising seniors have dual title hopes
For Miles Cartwright and Fran Dougherty, the No. 1 goal is obviously to lead Penn to an Ivy League championship before they graduate next May.
But in the meantime, they have another title aspiration: To win the Delco Pro-Am.
On Wednesday, the Penn teammates got off to a good start as Dougherty scored 19 and Cartwright added 14 in a 71-68 win for Trad Jazz over Doc P’s.
“We’re trying to come out here and win as many games as possible,” Cartwright said. “I told Fran today when we were lifting that I want to win Delco to start the summer off right.”
Perhaps the best part of the opening-night performance was that it showed that Dougherty is well on his way back to full health after missing much of the 2012-13 campaign due to an illness (mono) and an injury (dislocated elbow). The forward’s absence was one of the main factors in the Quakers’ disappointing fifth-place finish in the Ivy League.
“It’s always great to see Fran on the court,” said Cartwright, who averaged 13.5 points per game last season. “When he went down, that was a big blow to us last year. But you know Fran’s one of our main guys and we count on him to win games and make plays for us. I’m really happy to see him out there 100 percent.”
The rising Penn seniors also got to play against a future teammate: Matt Howard.
Howard, who was among a handful of incoming Penn freshmen to play on various courts Wednesday night, finished with 13 points for his Doc P’s team. And Cartwright liked what he saw in the athletic guard.
“I’m just so impressed with his basketball IQ,” Cartwright said. “He shares the ball, he runs the floor, he looks for his shot and he scores. He’s a big-time athlete. I’m really excited and I think he’s going to be great for us.”
Temple domination
In the marquee game of the night, 2012 Delco Pro-Am champion Take Your Game To Another Level edged 2011 champ Omega Medical, 101-100.
Take Your Game To Another Level was led by mainly Temple alums, including former NBA player Mardy Collins (30 points). Omega Medical, meanwhile, was made up of mostly ex-Villanova stars, including the Toronto Raptors’ Kyle Lowry (18 points) and Reggie Redding (22 points).
Temple products poured in points on other courts too, with 2012 alum Ramone Moore scoring 35 in an 83-81 win for his Temple Under Armour Team 1 and rising senior Dalton Pepper scoring 28 in a loss.