For the second straight year, the North Hills boys basketball team is forced to move on following an early departure of the team’s top scorer.
A year ago, the Indians were able to reach the WPIAL Class 5A basketball playoffs following the offseason loss of center Royce Parham, who transferred to a prep school before heading to Marquette, where he is currently a freshman.
North Hills finished last season 12-10, losing a heartbreaking double overtime game to Fox Chapel in the first round of the postseason.
“We had a pretty good second half of the season,” said coach Buzz Gabos, who enters his 19th season. “Our schedule was really difficult out of section. We had some challenges because we didn’t have many nights where we felt like we could go in and work on some things. That was hard from the beginning because we were really seeing some teams. But all things considered, I thought it was pretty good.”
Relying mostly on freshmen and sophomores last year, North Hills’ roster was dealt a blow in the offseason.
Eric James, who scored 19.5 points per game as a sophomore, transferred to a prep school and then to a high school in Kentucky, leaving a scoring hole in the Indians’ lineup. But it’s a void that Gabos feels is on its way to being filled.
“We didn’t really have him in the offseason,” said Gabos. “We kind of knew that he was looking to go elsewhere. Anything we did from May 1 on, we didn’t have him. It was just a matter of when he was going to leave.
“We’ve played with this group the whole time, and we like our guys. It’s a group that we feel like can be successful at both ends in understanding what it is we want to do with our defensive principles and offensive concepts. We feel like the guys that we have fit that system.”
Helping ease the pain of losing a dynamic scorer like James will be the returner of senior point guard Zach Pollaro, who averaged 18.5 points per game and was named to the all-section team.
“We’re expecting a lot of big things from him,” said Gabos. “A lot of Division III schools are interested in him and have been in contact with us quite a bit and watching him. He’ll be our main guy.
“As a sophomore, he was able to play the point and then knock down some shots, but he didn’t have to be real aggressive. We didn’t need him to do too much. Last year, we needed him to be a lead guard, get us up the floor and then look to score it.
“He keeps growing, getting bigger and stronger. He played high level AAU, which he hadn’t done prior to this summer, and it really helped him.”
Gabos feels that North Hills will have a steady nine-player rotation to go with Pollaro, including Nathan Schanbacher and Jackson Long, who both started as freshmen. The two will undoubtedly rise into bigger roles this year.
“We have a nice little mix of old and young,” said Gabos. “Right now they seem to all be playing well together. … It’s a good foundation to build around.”
A year ago, Gabos had to switch things up defensively during the season when an initial plan to run full-court pressure didn’t work as well as the team had hoped against some of the WPIAL’s better competition. Now, he’ll keep the structure that helped the Indians go 7-2 to close the regular season in 2023-24.
“We’ll be more of a half-court team defensively,” Gabos said. “We’ll mix it up at points, just to get teams to react. We like to play fast offensively up the floor, but defensively we’ll be more half-court.”
While the sting of last year’s postseason exit against a Fox Chapel program that has become a bit of a postseason rival of North Hills — having played each other in three consective playoffs — Gabos found a silver lining as the program gets set to bump back up to Class 6A this year.
“It was good that we got some experience in the playoffs,” he said. “We go back to 6A now, and we played those teams forever, but after the last two years, we have to learn all of those teams again. We’re two years removed from having played a lot of these teams.”
The Indians join Section 1-6A with Butler, Fox Chapel, New Castle, North Allegheny, Pine-Richland, Seneca Valley and Woodland Hills.
“Can we get in?” Gabos said of the playoff field which will feature eight teams. “If we get in, we’re in the quarterfinals. If you make it in and win one game, you’re right there.”
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That said, he knows that the road is going to be tough in the classification.
“With 6A, everyone knows that it’s going to be really top-heavy,” Gabos added. “Upper St. Clair and Central Catholic are, by far, the two best teams. In our section, Fox Chapel has a lot coming back and New Castle is probably the best team. Everybody else is going to be in the mix for those other spots.”
North Hills will certainly be battle tested when it comes to the meat of its section schedule. The Indians play nonsection games against Hampton, Shaler, Knoch, Baldwin, Avonworth and Bethel Park.
“It’s 6A,” Gabos said. “You have to play the better teams and the bigger schools because you know that, in order to win section games, you’re going to be challenged. Why not go out and play teams? If we can win some of those nonsection games, that’ll be a good indicator that we’re ready for the section.
“It’ll be fun, but there’s going to be a lot of close games. We’re going to have to win our share of tight ones at the end.”