City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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If Plymouth Whitemarsh was going to beat Roman Catholic on Tuesday night, it was going to need a monster game from Xzavier Malone. And for a quarter, the Colonials got that.

Malone, a senior guard, went off for nine points in the first eight minutes and Plymouth Whitemarsh led by as many as five in the first quarter. But then the Cahillites locked down on Malone, locked in offensively and imposed their will in the middle two quarters.

Roman pulled away from the District 1 champs for a 64-45 victory in the PIAA Class AAAA semifinals.

The Cahillites (28-4) will try to defend their state title against Pittsburgh powerhouse Allderdice in the Class AAAA championship game on Saturday in Hershey. Meanwhile, Plymouth Whitemarsh’s season comes to a close at 31-4 with both a SOL and District 1 title to boast.

While multiple Cahillites were tasked with helping to slow down Malone, who still finished with a game-best 21 points, chief among them was D’Andre Vilmar. The junior guard often denied Malone the ball and was one of the reasons the Colonials were limited to a combined 15 points in the second and third quarters after scoring 17 in the first.

“We wanted to hold him to below four points a quarter, and he started out with nine,” Vilmar said. “So coach said ‘Dre, you get him.’ I just wanted to make it hard for him. He’s a great player, so it feels good to stop him in transition, stop his three, because he can score in so many different ways. That was a great accomplishment to slow him down.”

Added Roman coach Chris McNesby: “DeAndre, you could tell he knew how to guard him. He wanted to take everything away. He made it hard for him, tried to deny him. And it was going to be a team effort because (Malone) is such a good player. We talked about it during the game and had Tony (Carr) and Lamar (Stevens) guarding him, but a team effort on that for sure.”

Offensively, Carr and fellow senior and Penn State commit Nazeer Bostick led the charge for Roman. Carr hit a buzzer-beating shot just inside the halfcourt line at the end of the first quarter – which launched a 15-4 run – and he finished with 14 points.

Carr added a game-high six assists as well as five rebounds, and Bostick had a team-high 18 points. Seven of Bostick’s points came in the third quarter when the Cahillites stretched a five-point halftime lead into a 16-point advantage. Bostick’s ability to get to and score at the rim was what Plymouth Whitemarsh coach Jim Donofrio said “closed the door on things.”

The Cahillites were on cruise control in the fourth quarter and enjoyed a 25-16 advantage on the glass in the game.

“They’re just too big and too athletic,” Donofrio said. “If I could stop the earth from spinning for a year or two, and have our guys grow, it’d be a different game. They know how to play, they play calmly. It doesn’t matter about a moment in this game. Maybe in a normal-sized game. But this is about, you have to be absolutely loose, good, make adjustments.”

Big man Paul Newman scored 12 points and grabbed five boards for Roman, and the team also got a combined 13 points from Stevens and Vilmar.

For Plymouth Whitemarsh, Malone, a Rider commit, got his 21 points on 6-of-17 shooting and drained a 3-pointer before coming out in the final minutes – the last shot of his touted high school career. Senior classmates Oakley Spencer and Kevin Ashenfelter combined for 11 points for the Colonials in what was the final game for a group that Donofrio praised a lot afterward.

“This group was very competitive and they listened. And they didn’t like being insulted,” the coach said. “I told them earlier in the year that they were the 17th-best team I coached here, and they took that to heart. You look at some of the other teams to come through PW, and this one probably isn’t as good on paper. But for them to win a league title and a District title, that’s special.”