City of Basketball Love

Will Slover (@WillSlover31)
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After winning its first Centennial Conference championship over Dickinson College on February 25, another first was in store for the Garnet of Swarthmore College.

This time, it was the first NCAA tournament game in school history. 

One would assume that the thought of playing in the first NCAA tournament game in the nearly seventy years of basketball at the school would completely consume the players and coaches participating, but not for this Swarthmore bunch.

“We didn’t think much about being in the tournament, I think it was just about being in the same environment we were in last weekend,” Swarthmore head coach Landry Kosmalski said. “We had a good comfort level from doing that.”

The comfort showed for No. 25 Swarthmore as it led from the opening tip to the final buzzer, and topped the College of Staten Island by a score of 86-61 in front of an ecstatic crowd at the Garnet’s Tarble Pavilion to lock down the first NCAA tournament win in Swarthmore history in as many attempts. 

If any nerves were rattling the Swarthmore (23-5) players before the game, it certainly didn’t show as a 17-4 run to start the contest put CSI in a hole too deep to recover from before five minutes of game time had even gone by.

“Getting out to a fast start, we do like to do that,” Kosmalski said. “We like to warm up hard and get out to a fast start but regardless of the start, we like to recover, be good the next four minutes and the next four minutes after that and just take it round by round.”

Winning the game round by round was the case for the majority of Friday night’s contest, except for a few minutes to close the first half where it looked like Staten Island (21-7) was going to get back into the game as the Dolphins battled from down 16 to cut the deficit to nine heading into the intermission. 

After the break, it didn’t look like CSI was going to go down quietly until a 16-3 run by Swarthmore over the course of 7:52 put the Garnet up by 25 and spelled the end for Staten Island. 

“Our mentality that we approach the game with is we take the game round by round.” junior forward Robbie Walsh said. “We try to win each four minute segment. It’s good to go up early but it doesn’t really mean a lot because they came back and then we battled back. At the end of the day, we just kept fighting.”

Walsh’s effort on Friday night was a huge reason why Swarthmore controlled the game from the get-go as the 6-foot-8 forward poured in a team-high 18 points and also grabbed a game-high of 10 rebounds.

While Walsh did most of the damage underneath, Swarthmore knew that in order to win it had to take advantage of the small Staten Island front, whose tallest player to see action was 6-foot-5. 

“It wasn’t particular to him,” Kosmalski said. “He obviously did a good job when he did get it but we were trying to get it inside. That’s always one of our keys but against them we did feel like we had an advantage and Robbie was doing a great job of getting really good position.”

Swarthmore’s ability to dominate the game inside proved to be huge for the Garnet in the win as they dominated the glass, out-rebounding Staten Island by a 52-35 margin.

Along with controlling the boards, Swarthmore’s inside attack also made up for its lack of three-point flare on Friday night as Swarthmore’s 20-of-41 (.487) clip from inside the arc made up for its 9-of-24 (.375) effort from deep.

While Walsh’s double-double played a large role in Swarthmore’s win, he was not alone in leading the charge. Swarthmore also got notable contributions from the rest of its starting five in Sam Lebryk, Cam Wiley, Zack Yonda and Chris Bourne. 

Lebryk cashed in for 16 points on 4-of-5 shooting, including going 4-of-4 from beyond the arc while Wiley added in 15 points, five assists and four rebounds. Rounding out the balanced attack for Swarthmore was 13 points and three rebounds from Yonda and eight points and five rebounds from Bourne. 

“We prefer to have balance,” Kosmalski said. “When we have four or five guys in double figures, we’re usually pretty good. I think last weekend we had a couple of guys carrying the load scoring-wise but tonight is much more indicative of our system and the way we try to play. We’re must more successful when we do it that way.”

Leading the way for the College of Staten Island was a game-high 20 points from senior guard Frank Schettino.

Up next for Swarthmore is a clash in the Round of 32 on Saturday night with No. 2 Christopher Newport (26-2), who boasts quite a different basketball history than Swarthmore. 

While Swarthmore’s basketball success has come recently, as just two seasons ago the Garnet boasted an 11-14 record, CNU is the opposite. 

Christopher Newport (Va.) has a program winning percentage of .697, along with having 13 All-Americans and an NBA player in not even 40 years of basketball at the school.

Playing a team with such a great history doesn’t phase Swarthmore though, as the Garnet will go into Saturday’s contest with the same mindset as they did this one. 
“We just want to keep the train rolling and keep doing what we’re doing and get ready for tomorrow,” Kosmalski said. “We can sit back and think about what happened after the season but right now we just want to keep focusing and doing what we’ve been doing.”