City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@jsantoliquito)
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It did not take long for Carryn Easley to be convinced, just a few hours on the ride home on an April weekend drive down the New Jersey Turnpike. The Neumann-Goretti 5-foot-5, all-Catholic League senior guard was sitting in the passenger’s seat when she turned to her mother and said, “Mom, I really like Fordham.”   

That is when Easley decided to commit to Rams’ coach Bridgette Mitchell. Easley, who averaged 15 ppg, 5 rpg 5.9 apg, 3.2 steals per game her junior year and is approaching 1,000 points for her career, choose the Atlantic 10 Conference schools based in the Bronx, New York, over Stony Brook and Norfolk, which came in late during her recruiting process and wanted both Easley and her Neumann-Goretti backcourt buddy Amya Scott in a package deal.

“I just felt welcomed at Fordham and feel this is the perfect fit for me, because they play really fast, and play four out and one in,” said Easley, a four-year starter who gave Mitchell a verbal commitment in June and went public with her choice on social media on Friday morning. “I am used to playing that style, and they play a lot of pick-and-roll, and I am going there to be a point guard. This is a big relief. I don’t have to stress with looking at other schools. I can sit back and enjoy my senior year knowing I have a college scholarship at the place where I want to play. I know where I am going to go.

“I wanted to wait until my official visit (September 13-15) to make it public. I like how everything on campus is in one space, and it is a safe environment. Coach Mitchell was doing the main recruiting. I’m not too far from home. That was a big deal to me. I’m a train ride away. During my official visit, I got a chance to sit on one of their practices. I didn’t get to catch their entire practice, but the last 10 minutes. Everything was high intensity, high energy. I loved the energy and the atmosphere. Coach B had film of me and told me what I needed to do to improve to get ready for the next level.”

Easley and Scott are looking to bookend their high school careers with another PIAA state championship. As freshmen, they won the 2022 Class 3A state championship, behind star guard Mihjae Hayes, now a redshirt junior at Virginia State. The last two years the Saints were knocked out in the second round of the PIAA Class 4A state playoffs by Wyomissing and Albany-bound center Amaya Stewart, Easley’s K-Low Elite 17U AAU teammate.

Last season, the Saints finished 19-7 overall and 8-3 in the Catholic League. Easley went down fighting in the 62-52 Wyomissing state playoff loss, scoring a team-high 22 points, with five rebounds, five assists and three steals.

Mitchell told Easley how she likes her reads off pick-and-rolls, how she gets her teammates involved, and she urged her to shoot more her senior year. Mitchell also stressed Easley commit to a consistent weight-training regimen to deal with the bigger, stronger women she will be confronting in the A-10.

A native of Trenton, N.J., Mitchell was a McDonald’s All-American and New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year at the Peddie School. She led the Rams to a 13-17 overall finish and 8-10 in the Atlantic 10 Conference in her first season at Fordham. Easley is among Mitchell’s first 2025 commits.

“I could not be happier for Carryn,” said Saints’ legendary coach Andrea Peterson, the 2015 national Naismith Girls High School Basketball Coach of the Year and the USA Today Coach of the Year. “Carryn is a four-year starter for me, and I have watched her grow up right before my eyes. Carryn is a great kid. Everyone loves her. She does all the right things, on and off the court. Carryn and Amya know what it is like to win a state championship. Her committing now makes getting that state title her senior year that much easier.

“Carryn is tiny, she’s 5-foot-5, and people were saying she was too small to play Division I basketball. She’s a dog. She reached this point against all odds. She will get buckets; she can score. Over the years, she has become a better shooter. A lot of schools past on her because of her size. She is going to prove a lot of people wrong. Fordham got a good one. For me, knowing Carryn is set and happy, that is going to make this season go that much better. Carryn does things I still shake my head about. She does not back down from anyone, and she earned this. When she told me where she was committing, I had a little tear in my eyes. Coach B loves her.”

Easley’s focus now shifts to plunging everything into closing her career with another state title.  

“That’s goal and I can’t wait to start,” said Easley, who wants to major in health science and will be joined again by a pretty special sophomore, Reginna Baker, a first-team all-Catholic who has four college offers after her freshman year. “I can have fun. I know what it is like to win. I want to experience that again. We have the team to do it. But we still have work ahead of us—and I still need to work harder and get better.”

Peterson has been cultivating her backcourt “twinkies,” as she likes to call Easley and Scott, for some time. Her emotional, and physical investment in her two guards has come to fruition.

“I have been telling Carryn and Amya to stay the course, that their time will come,” Peterson said. “What is special about Carryn and Amya is that they are not flashy. They are steady leaders. I wanted to scream when I heard Carryn was committing to Fordham. Hearing her voice and her happiness made me feel like that proud mom. You could hear the sense of relief in Carryn. She’s ready. I’m bracing myself now for senior night, and when Amya and Carryn play their last game, win or lose, it will be emotional for me. They’re my babies who grew up into young ladies. Their best basketball is ahead of them.”

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.