The 2014-15 Malvern Prep Basketball team is coming off a shaky season. Last year, the Friars went 12-14(4-6 in Inter-Ac) in Coach John Harmatuk’s second year as head coach.

The team has to replace last year’s contributing seniors Joey Fitzpatrick and Chris Anderson. The Friars will be looking to underclassmen such as Quinn McCahon ’18, Billy Corcoran ’18 and Brady Devereux ’18 to step up and perform at a high level.

“I’m excited for the upcoming season,” McCahon said. “We have great leadership in our senior and junior classes.”

“I believe that we have a great shot of winning the Inter-Ac this year,” McCahon said. “We now are really understanding Coach Tuk’s coaching style and philosophy.”

Seniors Will Powers, Ryan McNulty, and Mike Hollingsworth are expected to be great leaders for the team and plan to lead them to success.

Powers is very excited for his senior year as point guard, and his last time to wear the Malvern jersey. He wants to bring the Inter-Ac title back to Malvern and believes it can be done by working as a team and not alone.

“We should not look out for a single player this year but rather the 5 guys on the court,” Powers said. “We will be very team oriented this season, utilizing all the members of the team.”

Powers acknowledges that height is a factor for the Friar team. “But we have talented bigs in Mike Hollingsworth and Billy Corcoran who will be able to play with anyone we play,” he said. “We will also try to speed the game up running up and down the court so teams won’t be able to utilize their bigs against us.”
Powers hopes to continue playing basketball in college. “Basketball has always been a passion and I would love to continue playing,” he said.

Head Coach John Harmatuk said that he is excited about the season. “This is year three and we think the expectation levels are high,” he said.

How does Harmatuk think the season is looking so far? “Hard to say,” he said. “Last team event was this summer. Basing everything off that event, we look ahead of schedule. We looked great defensively.”

“Hopefully tryouts have some surprises for us,” Harmatuk added. He is excited about the potential of freshman Tygee Leach, who played with the team in summer.

In his third year, Harmatuk expects Malvern to be back on top in the Inter-Ac and grow the basketball community here at Malvern.