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Allen\u2019s Tiheed Wise looks to pass the ball against Dieruff during an Eastern Pennsylvania Conference boys basketball game on Saturday, Dec.20, 2025, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. (Jonathan Broady\/Special to The Morning Call)<\/p>\nThe high school basketball season seems to offer no breaks.<\/p>\n
Even on Sunday there were two games involving two of the area\u2019s better teams as Parkland played St. Joe\u2019s Prep and Executive took on Overbrook in special events.<\/p>\n
There is a batch of games Monday night and a few more Tuesday before finally teams take off Wednesday and Thursday for Christmas.<\/p>\n
League play won\u2019t resume until Jan. 3 in the Colonial League and Jan. 6 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.<\/p>\n
Teams are handling the holiday break in different ways. Some aren\u2019t playing at all, some are playing single games and some are participating in holiday tournaments.<\/p>\n
While there aren\u2019t as many tournaments as there used to be, the ones that continue are intriguing, with unusual matchups. This year, all of them are Dec. 29-30, since no one wants to play the day after Christmas, over the weekend or on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
At Easton, for example, the annual rotary tournament is bringing Executive and Pennridge to the event, which always features the host Red Rovers and Phillipsburg. The Slatington Rotary tournament at Northern Lehigh began in 1982 and is still going strong, with Catasauqua, Pleasant Valley and Bethlehem Christian in the mix. Whitehall will host its annual event with Nazareth, Northwestern Lehigh and Delaware County Christian.<\/p>\n
Allen offers three teams from outside the area joining the Canaries at J. Milo Sewards Gym.\u00a0Wilkes-Barre Area from District 2, Thomas Edison from Philadelphia, and Woodson High School from Fairfax, Virginia, fill out the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important for us to have a tournament because there\u2019s a long break from school for the kids, and it\u2019s important for our players to have some competition over the holidays,\u201d Allen Athletic Director Randy Atiyeh said. \u201cLike most schools, we try to schedule something. But for us, it has also become like an Allen High School reunion because a lot of kids come back and look forward to it. It\u2019s a lot of work to host something over the holidays, but for us it\u2019s important to do it. The girls will also be involved on the first night, so we should have a good crowd over the two nights and good competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are local ties with two of the three outsiders coming to Allentown.<\/p>\n
Doug Craig, the son of former Liberty coach and athletic director Joe Craig, has built Woodson into a top-notch program. Mike Levin, Edison\u2019s athletic director and coach, is an Allen graduate.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike Levin was a football teammate of mine,\u201d Allen coach Darnell Braswell said. \u201cHe was the center when I was the quarterback. We had a really good relationship, and three years ago we started talking about it at a Christmas party. We reached out to Randy, and he made it happen. We\u2019re playing Edison on the first night and it\u2019s going to be a homecoming for my friend, and that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. We love to have people coming back to Allen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atiyeh said it\u2019s not to run a holiday tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work involved,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t mean for the athletic directors. We have a lot of people working on our staff, including the custodians and with school out, they would love to have some time off. But it\u2019s important for us to have one for our kids, for our alumni. They love to come back, and it\u2019s a nice chance to see people you don\u2019t normally see. So, we\u2019re going to keep holding these tournaments for as long as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did you know?<\/p>\n
Nazareth made noise around the local basketball world, and even the nation, when Bobby Grzenda hit the game-winning 3-pointer from well beyond half court Saturday in a 52-49 home win over Easton. The play was shown as one of the Top 10 plays of the day on ESPN\u2019s \u201cSportsCenter.\u201d As Nazareth basketball\u2019s X account noted, it was a moment that the entire team will never forget and it came on Hahn Day, in honor of Nazareth senior basketball player Logan Hahn\u2019s mother, Mary, who died in October at age 60 after a battle with cancer. All proceeds from the Nazareth-Easton game went to the American Cancer Society and also helped to support the family.<\/p>\n
Saturday summaries<\/p>\n
In EPC games played Saturday, Parkland beat visiting Emmaus 64-41 for its sixth straight win after an opening-night loss to Allen. The Trojans made 11 3-pointers spread out among eight players. Tyler Beck had 12 points, while Blake Nassry and Nassim Adams added 11 and 10, respectively.<\/p>\n
Allentown Central Catholic celebrated its Rockne Wall of Fame Day with a 60-50 win over Whitehall. Cameron Hines scored 25 points, and Yariel Gonzalez added 19 to offset a 35-point effort by the Zephyrs\u2019 Seth Hoderewski.<\/p>\n
In Colonial League games Saturday, Notre Dame-Green Pond won its sixth straight by beating Saucon Valley 53-43 as Justin Manning scored 21 and Drew Boyd added 12 while freshman Thomas Cahill, son of Lehigh football coach Kevin Cahill, scored 23.<\/p>\n
Catasauqua bounced back from Friday\u2019s loss to Notre Dame-Green Pond with a 68-43 road win over Wilson Area. Reece Lopez scored 19, while Frankie Pujols and Aalani Nix chipped in with 17 and 15, respectively.<\/p>\n
Player of the Week<\/p>\n
Tiheed Wise Jr. \u2014 Allen<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s Tiheed Wise looks to pass the ball against Dieruff during an Eastern Pennsylvania Conference boys basketball game on Saturday, Dec.20, 2025, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. (Jonathan Broady\/Special to The Morning Call)<\/p>\n
Allen\u2019s Tiheed Wise Jr. played more of a supporting role, often overshadowed by second-team all-league selection Keith Jackson last season. Jackson averaged 18.1 points per game last season when the Canaries bounced back from a 2-20 season in 2023-24 to go 16-11, finish third in District 11 6A, and reach the state tournament. Wise averaged 10.2 ppg<\/p>\n
But with Jackson having graduated, Wise has moved more into the spotlight this season, and he has been shining as bright as almost any player in the area through the first three weeks of the season. He is averaging 22.1 points per game during Allen\u2019s 7-0 start. He has scored 32 points against Parkland, 31 against Pocono Mountain East, and 25 against Nazareth in a game in which he tallied all 16 of his team\u2019s points in the first quarter and had 21 in the first half.<\/p>\n
He has 19 3-pointers this season, and even when he\u2019s not scoring, he\u2019s rebounding, passing, hustling and doing everything he can to help his team win. He is nicknamed Chunk, and through the first part of the season, a chunk of Allen\u2019s success has to be attributed to Wise\u2019s becoming a complete player.<\/p>\n
\u201cChunk is doing everything we\u2019re asking him to do,\u201d Braswell said. \u201cHe\u2019s scoring, he\u2019s passing the ball, and he has become a really unselfish player. He defended a big man the other night, and then he guarded a point guard [against Dieruff]. He\u2019s extremely talented, and yet he\u2019s selfless, and the other guys understand that. They have to be ready for him to pass them the ball. He has taken steps to become more of a leader. Our coaching staff has worked on helping him with that.\u00a0 It\u2019s not perfect, but he\u2019s doing everything he can to help the rest of the guys get up to speed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wise fouled out against Dieruff with 6:10 left in Saturday\u2019s game. He had 14 points before departing, but his effort helped get the Canaries the lead and they held on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were 2-20 two years ago, but we\u2019re trying to make everyone forget that season,\u201d said Xayvon Wimberly, another senior leader who meshes well with Wise. \u201cWe\u2019re looking to keep this going. We don\u2019t want to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The high school basketball season seems to offer no breaks. Even on Sunday there were two games involving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,29375,305,726,432],"class_list":["post-67477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-high-school-basketball","tag-high-school-sports","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}