Mt. Carmel's Success Is No Real Shocker

By: Keith Mills

Let’s begin with a quiz.

Which local boys basketball team began the season by beating a team in ESPN’s Top 25 national poll?

A. Mount St. Joseph
B. Randallstown
C. St. Frances
D. None of the above.

Which team starts five seniors and boasts three Division I players in the last three years?

A. Towson Catholic
B. Dunbar
C. Frederick Douglass
D. None of the above

Which team is led by a coach with direct ties to Calvert Hall’s Mark Amatucci; Leonard Trevino, now in his 18th year at Goucher College; and current Annapolis High coach John Brady, the winningest public school coach in state history?

A. John Bauersfeld, Calvert Hall
B. Josh Davalli, Loyola Blakefield
C. Brian Barber, Catonsville
D. None of the above

The answer to all three questions is "D", because the real answer is M.C., as in Mount Carmel.

That would be Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the small Catholic school on Eastern Avenue that has been serving the Essex-Middle River area for the last 120 years.

“They really know how to play,” said Brady, whose Panthers lost to Mount Carmel in the championship game of the Fred Stauffer Capital Classic last weekend. “They see the whole floor, and they’re unselfish. Defensively, they also see the whole floor. You think you have a passing lane, and they shut it down.”

Brady is in his 33rd year at Annapolis and has won over 800 games. One of his assistants now is Kenny Dunn, the longtime coach at South River. One of Dunn’s players in the late 1980s was Tom Rose, who would eventually play for Amatucci at Anne Arundel Community College before moving on to Goucher College, where he was a member of Trevino’s first recruiting class.

Now Rose is in his fifth year as coach at Mount Carmel.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Rose said. “We have a great group of kids who play hard.”

And very well.

Led by Troy Franklin, the lightning-quick, 5-foot-10 guard who signed in November to play at Towson University, and 6-foot-8 Marcanthony Franks, the Cougars are 13-1 after beating previously unbeaten Patapsco and perennial power Annapolis.

“Our guys play well together,” Rose said. “And we have a lot of experience. These guys have played in a lot of big games.”

Rose was an All-Anne Arundel County basketball and lacrosse player at South River High in Edgewater, graduating in 1989. When Amatucci left Loyola College in the mid-1980s, he eventually settled at Anne Arundel Community College, where Rose and former Annapolis assistant and Archbishop Spalding head coach Dale Chambers led the Pioneers to the No. 2 national ranking among Division II junior colleges.

Rose then went to Goucher, where he played lacrosse and basketball for two years before spending seven years as the school’s assistant athletic director and Trevino’s assistant coach. In 2002, he moved on to Mount Carmel, where he is now the school’s director of admissions, coordinator of development and the boys basketball coach.

The Cougars were 2-21 his first year at Mount Carmel and 13-14 in 2003-04. One year later, they won the MIAA C Championship, beating Park, 60-52. In 2005-06, they finished 24-5 and won the B Conference championship, while last year they finished 19-13 and lost to St. Mary’s for the B title.

Franklin arrived at Mount Carmel two years ago, transferring from Boys’ Latin after his sophomore season. He has spent the last 10 years playing for the Baltimore Stars AAU program and his dad, Troy Franklin Sr., and he is the third Division I player to come out of the Cougars’ program in the last three years.

Maros Zuffa, a 6-foot-5 swingman from Bratislava, Slovakia, first played at Southern Mississippi before transferring to Kentucky Wesleyan, one of the nation’s best Division II teams, while Ceslovas Kucinskas is a 6-foot-8 freshman from Silute, Lithuania, who is now playing for Fang Mitchell at Coppin State.

He and Franklin led the Cougars to the B Conference title game last year while Franklin has emerged as one of the state’s best players.

Franklin has good range on his jump shot, is explosive off the dribble and almost impossible to stop in the open court. He plays the off-guard in Mount Carmel’s set but will likely play the point for Pat Kennedy at Towson.

“As long as he can play in a high-pressure system he’ll be OK,” said Rose. “He is really tough to stop. We played Mount Zion [N.C.] last year, and they had three Division I players, and he was the best player on the floor.”

He’s also one of five seniors in Rose’s starting lineup. Dwayne Wheeler, an unselfish and savvy ball handler, starts at the point, Franks at center and Stanford McNair and Rummell King at forward. All five can pass and all five can score.

“They all know how to play,” said Will Marshall, coach at Patapsco. “I can see why [Tom] thinks they’re a tough matchup. They can do a lot of different things.”Marshall went to Sparrows Point High School, where he played for coach Russ Lingner. He went on to play at McDaniel College and is one of three coaches in the Cap Classic to have a connection with Brady.

Marshall played for a local AAU team coached by Brady while Barber, the coach at Catonsville, and his top assistant, brother Lenny, both played for Brady at Annapolis. Rose played against Brady and for Dunn at South River.

“Seeing those guys together brought back a lot of good memories,” said Rose, now 36 years old and the father of three.

“He was a tough kid,” Dunn said. “He really went after it. Not just in basketball. He was also a really good lacrosse player.”

And now he’s the coach of a team that’s the answer to this question:

Which local boys basketball team is 13-1 with wins over Calvert Hall, St. Maria Goretti of the Catholic League and John Carroll, ranked 22nd in ESPN’s first national poll of the season?

And which team plays Mount St. Joe Jan. 30 in a game that will certainly trigger the interest of curious local fans who are wondering just how good the Cougars really are.

“They’re good,” Brady said. “They really see the big picture.”

“Tommy’s done a real good job with them,” Dunn said. “They’re smart and they play together.”

“The program’s grown almost by word of mouth,” said Rose, whose team’s only loss was to the Hill School of Pottstown, Pa., three weeks ago, 81-78. “Troy makes us go, but our other guys can play, too.”

Issue 3.1: January 3, 2008