City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

New Moravian College (Pa.) head coach Justin Potts has his future backcourt.

Just a few weeks after the former East Stroudsburg assistant coach took over the Division III program in Bethlehem, Pa., he’s secured commitments from two talented Philly-area guards.

First it was Father Judge point guard Will Brazukas who pulled the trigger, doing so a few weeks back. That class doubled in size on Tuesday night, as Plymouth Whitemarsh’s Jimmy Murray came on board.

Moravian made a late surge in Murray’s recruiting. At the end of March, they weren’t even on his list; he told CoBL at the time that DeSales, Widener and Cabrini were his top three.

It was improving on the team’s 5-20 record (3-13 Landmark Conference) from a year ago that convinced Murray to commit to the school.

“I'd like to work with coach Potts to rebuild Moravian,” he told CoBL by text. 

He's not aiming too high for his first year: "My goal is just to improve the team's previous record...the turnaround starts with the solid recruiting class that Potts is putting together."

At Plymouth Whitemarsh, Murray had developed into one of the Philadelphia area’s top pure scorers. The 6-foot-tall guard is outstanding from beyond the arc and loves to pull up in transition, and can easily drop three or four triples in a row when he gets hot.

Last year he averaged nearly 20 ppg as P-W went 20-5, though the No. 6-seeded Colonials were surprisingly upset in the District tournament and didn’t qualify for states. His scoring output dropped this season to around 13.5 ppg, but that was thanks to the addition of junior Xzavier Malone to join Murray and fellow senior Andre Mitchell, a Catholic University commit; the three took turns leading the team in scoring all year long.

Powered by that backcourt trio, they went 28-4 this past season, making it to the District 1 AAAA final and the PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinals. And though for some schools that would be a fantastic year, Plymouth Whitemarsh has won state titles in the recent past--this was not excellence so much as it was the norm.

After playing in that atmosphere for four seasons, there’s something about building it up that appeals to Murray.

“Coming from P-W, winning is expected, and I think it would be nice to be a team that can come out of nowhere and it wouldn't be expected,” he said.

Murray is the perfect compliment to Brazukas, a pass-first point guard who's used to dealing with the toughness of the Catholic League, the state's top high school competition. 

And they both have the same goal in mind.

"I don't care about buckets," Brazukas said. "He can get the buckets, I'd just like to get the [wins]."