Penn Wood made it all the way back to the District One Class AAAA championship game.

A year after winning the PIAA title, the Patriots get a shot at winning the one crown that eluded them during a magical 2008-09 season. The Patriots solidified their return trip to the district title game Tuesday with a 71-49 win over Souderton.

Shawn Oakman (pictured), a junior center for coach Clyde Jones' team, had a breakout game. The 6-9, 245-pound Oakman scored a career-best 22 points, pulled in 10 rebounds, dished three assists and blocked three shots in the rout of the Indians. He was one of four players to score in double figures.

And about that championship game...

Everyone with any knowledge of District One has been saying since November that it's going to be an all PW title game. Now, that's official. Top-seeded Plymouth-Whitemarsh knocked off West Chester Rustin to move on to play Penn Wood for the crown.

And we're not just talking about the best two teams in the district --- they're the best two in the state. More incentive to get your tickets ASAP for Friday's final.

Tyree Johnson finally knows where he'll play his college basketball.

Penn Wood's senior point guard gave Hartford coach Dan Leibovitz a verbal commitment by telephone late Wednesday night. How late? Try 10 p.m.

"I wouldn't call it late. I wanted to weigh my options," said Johnson, the 2008-09 Daily Times Player of the Year. "I had to make the right decision and the right decision was to play for him. I had talked to my coach (Clyde Jones) earlier and I told him I was thinking about it. I told him that, most likely, I was going to do it (Wednesday) night."

Johnson had interest from a bevy of Atlantic 10 schools and had offers from Siena and Northeastern before committing to Leibovitz and the Hawks. Johnson plans on being academically eligible next fall. He said he's taking the SAT again just to make sure.

As for his first game after giving his verbal, well, Johnson was just trying to have fun. He did just that in Penn Wood's 57-40, Del Val League-clinching win over Chester. He couldn't help but smile after the Clippers' Maurice Nelson picked Johnson clean on one possession and then Johnson returned the favor on Chester's next trip up the court.

"It's basketball. I love it," Johnson said. "You've got to have fun with it."

Next season, Johnson will be having fun at Hartford.

Sunday, Penn Wood point guard Tyree Johnson became the eighth player in school history to score 1,000 points in his career. He did so nonchalantly, too, hitting a fourth-quarter free throw late in Penn Wood's 66-48 rout of Chester.

Johnson, the reigning Daily Times Player of the Year, finished with 10 points in the game. He joins Lamont Ferrell*, Rap Curry, Mike Holmes, Shawn Day, Ed Millard, Duane Johnson and Micah Covert# in Penn Wood's 1,000-point club. (Ferrell started at Yeadon and finished his career at Penn Wood; Covert started with the Pats and capped his career off with Chester).

Johnson's per-game average is down from a year ago. It doesn't have either him or Penn Wood coach Clyde Jones worried.

"Listen, it doesn’t really matter. I’m a point guard," Johnson said. "My job is to get everybody involved anyway. My points are going to come during the flow. I get them the ball, they get it to me. It’s as simple as that."

Added Jones: "The greatest compliment I can give Tyree this year is how, for the most part, he has really decided that he has other people to get the ball to. He sees himself as a distributor. And in this day and age, when it’s tough to get kids to not think I have to shoot, to see him do that is special. The sad part about that is it doesn’t put him in anybody’s rankings for scoring, but it makes him perfect for us and what we do. The other night, I actually had to tell him to shoot the ball."

Johnson is getting interest from Monmouth, Rider, Hartford and Siena.

###################

Also, here's some more from the boys basketball scene:
---Daily Times photographer Bob Gurecki grabbed some video and assembled highlights from Sunday's Penn Wood-Chester game.
---This week marks the first installment of the boys basketball notebook - the feature focuses on The Haverford School's Andrew Acker, probably the county's most improved player thus far. The notes include Glen Mills' Raheem Harvey, who sustained a car accident during the holidays and remains hospitalized, and Chichester's Brian Parker, who has an outside chance at 1,000 points.

Here's an up-close look at the Chester/Penn Wood game:
Early in the second quarter and with the game's outcome still in doubt, Penn Wood junior forward Aaron Brown (pictured) was whistled for a technical foul. The call was questionable, causing spectators and reporters, alike, to scratch their heads.

Brown is not an overly aggressive player. And players from both sides were jawing. Turns out he was whistled for running into his teammate, Shawn Oakman, which had to have been perceived as a sign of boasting, because there was no blatant contact between players from opposing teams.

"They all talk (trash) and any kind of bump would be seen as a form of aggression," Penn Wood coach Clyde Jones said. "Aaron is always emotional. But I know his emotions are going to lead to production."

#################


BY THE NUMBERS
10-11: Chester's proficiency at the free-throw line, a 91-percent clip.
19-34: Penn Wood's proficiency at the free-throw line, a 55-percent clip.
37-21: Penn Wood's rebounding advantage.
1: Technical foul, against Penn Wood's Aaron Brown.
3:28: Time it took Chester to get on the board.
4: Points scored by Will Brown during a dynamic second-quarter play. He hit a 3-pointer from the right side of the arc and, after sustaining a foul by Chester's Laquan Robinson, made the subsequent free throw.

#################


The arrangement to bring the first meeting of the season between these two Pennsylvania titans to Saint Joseph's University was the product of internal connections. Penn Wood alumnus Rap Curry, also the Patriots' athletic director, played a fruitful college career on Hawk Hill. So did Jameer Nelson, whose younger brother, Maurice Nelson, plays for Chester.

The younger Nelson, who had 17 points, was playing on the floor of Hagan Arena - formerly the Fieldhouse - for the first time in his life. And hanging about the court, in the rafters, is a banner bearing his brother's No. 14 and his likeness.

"I didn't even look up there today," Mo Nelson said. "I have in the past. Not today."

PHOTO BY DAILY TIMES' PHOTOGRAPHER BOB GURECKI

No one told Penn Wood that defending its PIAA Class AAAA championship was going to be easy. They're not even into the Del Val League portion of their schedule but the Patriots are fighting an uphill battle.

Coach Clyde Jones (pictured) and the Patriots went 1-3 this week at the City of Palms Classic, an exclusive, invite-only basketball tournament held in Fort Myers, Fla. Only the best of the best make it there. That's why the Pats got the call this offseason.

Among their losses were defeats at the hands of Paterson Catholic (N.J.) and Westchester (Calif.), both ranked within the top 50 in the nation by ESPN/Rise Magazine. The Patriots also lost to St. Frances (Md.) Wednesday.

Here's how Jones sizes up Penn Wood's performance down south:
On his level of frustration after these games were:
“Well, (Wednesday) we lost on a last-second shot to St. Frances. Against Paterson Catholic, we were up 20 and we turned over the ball late. Shawn (Oakman), Darian (Barnes) and Dequan (Pelzer) all fouled out. And (Tuesday), against Westchester, we tied it late and had another turnover. It's really been turnovers in late minutes that have hurt us.”

On accepting these losses because of who they were against:
“No losses are acceptable for me. But it's something the kids needed to experience. It's a measuring stick for us. It'll help us when we play teams back home. We were a turnover away from beating Westchester, the No. 6 team in the country (according to ESPN/Rise Magazine). And we were taking apart Paterson Catholic, another nationally ranked team, for three quarters. It's probably the best three quarters I've seen us play since I've been at Penn Wood. I feel for the kids because they deserved to win one of these games. They deserve them.”


On the play of junior forward Aaron Brown (pictured), who averaged 20.3 points and 7 rebounds in four games:
“He hit a wall (Wednesday), but he's really made it known that he's become a big-time recruit and a big-time player. The last two games, teams have seen what he can do. And it's not just Aaron. With Shawn, we've had coaches ask us why he isn't a top-10 Division I recruit. In Will Brown, you're starting to see what he can do when he comes out of his shell.”

On what he heard from college coaches while there:
“Tom Crean from Indiana told me he hasn't see a team play this well together in a long time. He also said it was encouraging to see kids interacting with each other and pushing each other the way our guys do. I also heard from coaches at Auburn, who saw our game against Paterson Catholic, that we were one of the best functioning high school teams in the country. The people running the tournament told us our kids were the most well-mannered, well-behaved team that's ever come through. That all means a lot to me, because when you're a coach, you're a lifelong learner. And it shows that our kids can learn, too.”

Penn Wood (3-3) returns to action Monday against Academy of the New Church at Widener.