City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Derrick Woods didn’t know what it was like to be a freshman on a basketball team.

In his first year at Trenton HS, he didn’t play.

Even as a sophomore, when he transferred to Pennsbury HS (Pa.), Woods’ basketball experience was limited to two junior varsity games.

When Woods first arrived at Pennsbury for the 2012-13 school year, head coach Bill Coleman and staff weren’t exactly blown away.

“Literally, we said ‘him?’” the Falcons’ sixth-year coach remembered. “That’s the truth, a kid that just wanted to dunk the ball all the time and could barely run and walk.”

That’s a long way from what it takes to play in the Atlantic 10, where Woods now resides as a freshman at St. Bonaventure, and where he’s getting minutes as part of the Bonnies frontcourt rotation. On Wednesday night, the 6-foot-8, 220-pound forward helped Bonaventure to a 83-73 road win at Saint Joseph’s.

Considering where he was the last time he was a freshman, Woods has an appreciation for every minute he gets.

“I look back on how people looked down on me, saying how I wasn’t going to be ready, and now I’m here, playing a fair amount of minutes, as a freshman playing more minutes than people thought I would play, starting half the season,” Woods said. “I’m not really complaining.”

By his junior year at Pennsbury, Woods made his way onto the varsity squad, where he was immediately thrust into a big role as one of the area's few true big men. He wasn't bad, putting up 9.9 ppg and 7.4 rpg, though there were still a lot of learning moments as would be expected in his first year of true competitive basketball.

Woods made a huge jump from his junior season to his senior year, when he averaged 16.3 ppg and 11.1 rpg for a 25-7 Falcons squad that made it to the PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinals.

“His growth from the time he started with us to when he left us was just huge,” Coleman said. “By the time of his senior year, he was a completely different player.”

Though he began his first college season as the Bonnies’ starting center, Woods moved to the bench midway through the season as redshirt freshman Jordan Tyson returned from an offseason wrist injury.

His minutes have dropped over the course of the season, as he gets exposed defensively and certainly looks at times like someone who’s only in his third real season of competitive basketball. But the athletic, mobile big man still has plenty of upside, and should team with Tyson to provide strong depth at the center position for the next three years.

“The transition from high school to college, I didn’t expect it to be as big as it was,” he said. “But I’m coming into it, I’m playing some minutes, I’m performing when I do play.”

Right now he’s further ahead on the offensive end, as he showed with an 11-point outing against Davidson on Jan. 2 in just 16 minutes, and is averaging 4.3 ppg and 2.7 rpg in 19 games of action.

“He’s coming, he’s coming. He’s going to be like any freshman, he’s going to play well sometimes, he’s not going to play well sometimes,” St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt said. “He’s getting better, and we expect him to have a really good career for us.”

The game against Saint Joseph’s was Woods’ first back in the region since he’s gotten to college, and he estimated that “probably about 30” family and friends came out to support him in a gym he’s played in numerous times before, though only in summer events and AAU tournaments.

It also was an opportunity for him to go up against a former AAU teammate, SJU freshman point guard Lamarr Kimble; the Neumann-Goretti product was the point guard on Team Final’s oldest squad during the 2014 summer, with Woods serving as the post presence on the Nike-backed squad.

“(During warmups) the ball kind of rolled over and he was coming over to get it, so I talked him up a little bit,” Woods said. “After the game just now, I had a nice little conversation with him, talking about college and stuff.”

While he continues to adjust to college life in Olean, N.Y. and further development on the basketball court, Woods can’t help reflect on the path he’s taken to get there.

“All-in-all,” he said, “it’s pretty good.”