City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Plymouth-Whitemarsh is starting to make a believer out of one specific person.

Despite an 18-1 record heading into the biggest game of the year, at Cheltenham on Tuesday night for the outright Suburban One-American title, head coach Jim Donofrio wasn’t quite sure what he had in his 18th group of Colonials.

He figured he would find out after 32 minutes against a Panthers squad that had come within a bucket of taking them out on their home court earlier in the month.

“On their senior night, in a moment when they have a chance to tie for a league title, what are we made of?” Donofrio asked.

After Tuesday night, he might have a little bit better of an idea.

In a packed house split almost evenly between Cheltenham supporters and Plymouth Whitemarsh fans, the Colonials watched a roaring crowd support a group of 11 Panther seniors on Senior Night and then came back to silence them in a 58-56 win.

It was far from P-W’s greatest outing of the year; the Colonials (19-1, 12-1 SOL) turned it over 18 times and shot just 11-of-25 from the foul line -- including five misses by star guard Xzavier Malone in the final few minutes of play.

But a win is a win, and this one secured the third-straight conference title and the 12th of Donofrio’s 18 years at the helm of the Colonials. A loss would have meant a potential sharing of the title with Cheltenham (15-5, 9-3), depending on the final night of league play at the end of the week.

“We like league titles,” Donofrio said, “and we don’t like sharing ‘em.”

Malone, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard bound for Rider, more than made up for those foul line difficulties with some of the biggest shots of the game. His two three-pointers midway through the fourth--each putting his team up three points--propelled him to a game-high 19.

“Did you see those shots he made in the fourth quarter? It didn’t matter if Dwayne Wade was on him, he was going to hit that step-back 3-pointer,” Cheltenham head coach John Timms said. “Once you get in the groove, those shots it was hitting, it didn’t matter.

Arguably even bigger for the Colonials were the 10 points of senior big man Mike Lotito, including eight straight by the 6-foot-6 forward to open the fourth quarter and turn a 38-35 deficit into a 43-40 lead.

His most explosive play was the third of those buckets, a steal and finish that gave his team its first-ever lead of the game with seven minutes to play.

Lotito also played hero in the first matchup between the teams, hitting a reverse layup to lift P-W to a 64-62 win on Jan. 8.

“It’s crazy,” he said of his late impact against Cheltenham two games in a row. “A lot of fourth-quarter success has something to do with conditioning and we had a lot of work over this off season for conditioning. That’s when you want to be your best. Luckily I was tonight.”

The Colonials were able to hang on after Malone’s key 3-pointers thanks to another key triple by Kevin Ashenfelter, who made it a six-point lead with 1:35 left; Ashenfelter, who finished with nine points, also put in a pair of foul shots in the final minute for P-W’s final bucket of the game.

After coming up empty on a few possessions in the final 45 seconds around Malone’s missed foul shots, Cheltenham got a last-second bucket from Justin Sutton to provide for the final margin.

Assuming P-W takes care of business on Thursday at home against Norristown (6-6 SOL), it should enter the District 1 AAAA playoffs next Friday as a top-4 seed, with three potential home games ahead; two wins and a state berth is assured.

Cheltenham won’t be ranked quite as high -- the Panthers were No. 9 in the unofficial rankings released yesterday, with the Colonials No. 3 -- but a home game is certain. That’s a nice bump up from last year, when they were the No. 29 seed and lost by 40 in the first round.

To, of course, Plymouth-Whitemarsh.

If the two programs meet up a third time this year, whether in districts or beyonds, it would be hard to find anybody who thinks the Colonials would win easily, and that alone is a big step forward for the Panthers.

“Not to bring any disrespect to anybody else in the conference, I think we brought legitimate competition to PW,” Timms said. “I think that every time they go out there they think they can lose to Cheltenham, and that’s the stage we’re trying to be at.”

Senior Khalil White (16 points) led the way for the Panthers, who had eight other players score though no one else finished in double figures.

Cheltenham and Plymouth Whitemarsh hasn’t been a traditional Suburban One rivalry, as P-W has generally had much more success in boys’ hoops, but the rise of the Panther program brought out a full P-W student section on the road, to match up with a stuff Cheltenham cheering section of its own.

It doesn’t hurt that the two schools are only about 15 minutes and less than 10 miles apart, with two senior-laden lineups that were plenty familiar with each other.

“I’ve played against that starting five since I was in seventh grade,” Lotito said. “So I know all those guys. We’ve played against each other for a long time, ever since middle school.”

Even though his team wasn’t able to get the win, Timms was in a fairly good mood afterwards. The third-year coach, who inherited a dysfunctional program two years back, has turned them from a group that didn’t know how to win to one that knows what teamwork really is.

There was no more proof of that on Tuesday night: Timms went to insert a lineup consisting of some seniors who don’t usually get the spotlight, or many minutes at all. But Mark Lee, Myles Salley-Holland and Aiden Corrigan told him that this game was more important than their getting a chance to start, and so it was Timms’ usual starting five--including four other seniors--who took the court.

“The culture here has changed from the year I came here,” Timms said. “We’re now at a stage where we got seniors that say ‘no, it’s not about me on the court, it’s about the program,’ and they are making sacrifices.”