By Tom Robinson, NEPABasketball.com
Any plan opponents developed for defending Austin Finarelli after facing him in the Dallas Mountaineers backcourt for three seasons had to be scrapped early in the 2021-22 season.
Finarelli’s play from the beginning of the season led to revisions of many scouting reports.
By the time he was done, the senior guard had helped rewrite the Dallas boys basketball record books.
The driving force behind a school-record 27 victories and a first-ever Dallas trip to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association state semifinals was rewarded Friday morning with the announcement of his second-team status on the Class 4A all-state basketball team selected by Pennsylvania Sports Writers.
Finarelli spent the time between his junior and senior seasons working on the quickness of his release as well as the accuracy and range of his perimeter jumpers.
“In the past, I could always get to the rim in a pretty good way,” said Finarelli, who doubled his 3-point production to just a shade under 2 per game while averaging more than 20 points for the first time in 4 years as a starter. “Being able to expand my game made teams have to respect the fact that I could shoot, but also still blow by them and get to the rim.
“Adding different parts to my game was just huge.”
Instead of trying to cut off his effective attacking of the rim, defenses had to guard Finarelli on the perimeter as well and sometimes with extra resources.
“It opened things up for everyone,” Finarelli said. “It helped me distribute and helped the team out overall.”
The toughness that allowed Finarelli to battle bigger players for rebounds and interior points was shown in a different form when his high school career was in jeopardy of being ended early.
Instead of stopping at an all-star regular season, division scoring title and Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 championship, Finarelli bandaged up a broken shooting hand and kept playing.
The Elizabethtown College commit averaged 17.4 points in the district final and four state playoff games played with the injury. Finarelli helped Dallas win its first District 2 title since 1984 and go one round farther than the 2019-2020 team that won two state games before the playoffs were shutdown because of COVID. He was also a starter on that team.
Facing Neumann-Goretti, the Philadelphia Catholic League team that stormed through the state Class 4A bracket with 5 wins by a total of 101 points, Finarelli closed his career with 25 points, 8 rebounds and 2 steals.
“Looking back, I think I will remember this for a long, long time,” Finarelli said. “It was super fun year.
“We got stopped by an extraordinary team (state champion Neumann-Goretti). What we did was spectacular and I’m super proud of all my guys.”
Friday is the third straight day that a District 2 boy was named all-state.
Justice Shoats from Holy Redeemer was named second team in Class 3A Thursday after Joe Macciocco from Old Forge made the third team in Class 2A Wednesday.
