City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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Swarthmore College is having its best men’s basketball season in recent memory, and whatever happened Saturday afternoon was not going to change that.

But the Garnet had a chance for a new feat in this resurgent season: Beating a ranked opponent. However, in a one-possession game with less than a minute left against Franklin and Marshall – ranked as the No. 16 Division-III team in the country by d3hoops.com – Swarthmore had two offensive trips that resulted in no shots and a pair of turnovers.

In a tight game, the late slipups allowed the Diplomats to ice the contest at the foul line and leave Swarthmore’s Tarble Pavilion with a 72-66 win on Saturday afternoon.

“In hindsight you’d want to call a timeout when things go wrong” Swarthmore coach Landry Kosmalski said afterward. “But I thought on the first play we executed well, but a pass got tipped or bobbled, I’d have to look at the tape. The second one, I definitely should have called timeout because we were on the fly and didn’t do what we wanted to do. …We have to be ready, it we face them again, to execute better both ways.”

The loss was just the third for the Garnet in the Centennial Conference, as they’re 10-3 in league play and 16-4 overall, a noticeable improvement from last year’s 11-14 record. Meanwhile, the Diplomats – who have now beat Swarthmore twice this season -- improved their Centennial-best record to 12-1 and are 17-3 on the season.

In a game Swarthmore led by one at halftime, the second half was a seesaw affair, with the teams producing eight ties and seven lead changes over the course of the final 20 minutes. The Diplomats led 67-66 with just less than a minute left, and after a missed layup, the Garnet got the ball with a chance to take a late lead.

However, a deflected pass ended that possession, and after two made free throws for F&M, Swarthmore threw the ball away again the next time down the floor.

F&M’s Brandon Federici, who is the conference’s leading scorer with 17.4 points per game, nailed seven free throws in the final two minutes and finished with a game-high 27 points. Federici did almost all of his damage in the first half after he was glued to the pine due to foul trouble early. He scored 22 of his points in the second half, when he hit a trio of 3-pointers and was 9-for-11 from the foul line.

“I think one thing is he’s smart and effective and he got to the foul line,” Kosmalski said of Federici. “He’s really smart and crafty. He also got a few on baseline out-of-bounds plays, and that’s on me. Those are six points we’d obviously like to have back. But he’s just a great player.”

It was a balanced scoring attack for the Garnet, who had four players score in double figures. Zack Yonda led the way with 17 points, 11 of which came in the first half. Guard Matt Brennan and forward Henry Cousineau evenly split 30 points for the Garnet, while Robbie Walsh had the game’s only double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Despite the loss, the Garnet are still in good position in the league playoff picture. At 10-4, they were tied for Gettysburg for second place in a conference that has a five-team playoff. But with four regular season games left in the next few weeks, the playoffs are not Kosmalski’s concern right now.

“We’re not thinking about the seeding or the playoffs or where we are in that picture,” he said. “We have to focus on the next day and using it to get a little bit better. And there are lessons from this game we can use.”