City of Basketball Love

Austin Petolillo (@AustinPSports)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2017-18 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 10. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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Expectations are not high for Lafayette basketball this upcoming season, to say the least.

Since winning the Patriot league tournament back in 2015, Lafayette has gone a combined 15-45 and 8-28 in Patriot League play.

Outside expectations haven’t changed much for this year, as Lafayette was picked to finish dead last in the Patriot League in the 2017-18 preseason poll released last month.

“I don’t pay much attention to the polls,” Lafayette head coach Fran O’Hanlon said. “Hopefully they use it as motivation because you still have to play the games.”

“It definitely motivates me,” said senior forward Matt Klinewski, a 6-8 Eastern (N.J.) grad and the team’s leading scorer a year ago. “The past two years we’ve been picked last and every year I try to tell our guys it just gives us that much more intensity to work and reason to work, to become better in games. It definitely motivates us.”

The 69-year-old O’Hanlon is entering his 23rd season as head coach at Lafayette, and this team might be his youngest one yet.

With just two seniors and two juniors on the roster alongside five sophomores and four freshmen, the Leopards will be faced with some challenges early on, especially considering their non-conference schedule is pretty tough, with a season opener at George Mason on Friday night, plus matchups against Villanova, Princeton and Penn, just to name a few.

“Well I want to see them hopefully play with poise, not phased by the lights coming on,” O’Hanlon said. “If they play like I’ve seen them play in practice, I think they have a good upside but I know there’s going to be some growing pains along the way.”

Freshman point guard Justin Jaworski headlines the 2017 recruiting class after having a stellar senior season at Perkiomen Valley high school. The 6-foot-0 guard averaged 22.2 points per game, leading the Vikings Pioneer Athletic Conference championship last year and berth in the PIAA Class 6A state playoffs, where they upset two-time defending champion Roman Catholic in the first round.

In addition to Jaworski, the Leopards add 6-foot-3 guard E.J. Stephens from Plantation, Florida, 6-3 guard Alex Petrie from Midlothian, Virginia and 6-8 forward Dylan Hastings from Quarryville, Pennsylvania to the team. All four freshmen are expected to play a good amount of minutes.

In their exhibition against Penn State on November 4th, O’Hanlon started both Jaworski and Petrie at the guard position with Jaworski playing 35 minutes and scoring 16 points on 40 percent shooting, while Petrie played 18 minutes and scoring 14 points on 55 percent shooting. Stephens and Hastings both came off the bench playing 20 minutes apiece, with Stephens scoring six points and Hastings hitting a pair of free throws for his only scores of the game.

Unfortunately for Lafayette, they will be without Jaworski for some time due to a sprained ankle suffered in their exhibition against Penn State. The freshman Stephens will start in his place with Petrie coming off the bench to begin the season against George Mason on November 10th.

Jaworski isn’t the only Leopard who will start the season hurt. Junior wing Auston Evans also suffered a sprained ankle against Penn State and sophomore guard Hunter Janacek dropped a weight on his foot during a workout. O’Hanlon said he’s hoping to have Evans and Janacek back for the season opener against George Mason, but was expecting Jaworski not to be available.

Lafayette returns projected starters in 6-foot-5 senior guard Eric Stafford, 6-foot-6 sophomore guard Kyle Stout and 6-foot-7 sophomore forward Lukas Jarrett.

Both Stafford and Stout averaged 6.6 points per game last season while both averaged about 25 mpg while Jarrett averaged 3.7 ppg in 18.1 mpg.

But the player Lafayette will rely the most on this season is Klinewski.

In addition to being the leading scorer for the Leopards a year ago, Klinewski finished last season as the second-leading scorer in the Patriot League averaging 16 points per game. He also chipped in six rebounds and about one assist per game all while averaging 27.5 mpg.

“I’m just going to work my tail off and work as hard as I can to help this team win some games,” Klinewski said. “Whether it’s rebounding, defensively, shooting the ball, whatever I have to do, I’m going to try to do my best to help the team win this year.”

“He plays hard as can be, he’s a little undersized for a five man but he scores the basketball,” O’Hanlon said. “He just plays with such heart, I expect him to continue to do that.”

As one of two seniors on the team, Klinewski will be seen as one of the leaders on this years Lafayette squad.

“I tried to show (Dylan) Hastings some of the way we play our offense and play our defense, just tried to lead them in that way and be a good leader and a good example.” Klinewski said.

Part of this leadership trait that Klinewski has can be thanks in part to former Lafayette guard Nick Lindner. Lindner, a four-year starter at point guard, finished his Lafayette career as the first Leopard to score more than 1,500 points and dish out more than 500 assists in his career. During the 2015 Patriot League conference tournament, Lindner was named tournament MVP after averaging 23.7 points per game and leading the Leopards to a conference championship

The Germantown Academy product is currently serving in the United States military and aside from being a great basketball player, Lindner was a great example of what a student-athlete should be.  

“He graduated from here on the Dean’s List, a 3.3 student, he probably worked out about seven hours a day, lifting and swimming and everything,” O’Hanlon said. “He was just in phenomenal shape and he did that every day, he was special.”

“It rubbed off on me, it rubbed off on a lot of the team last year, a lot of the freshmen saw how hard Nick worked and they have been doing it ever since,” Klinewski said. “A lot of the guys last year tried to get in the gym with him and work out with him, and this year a lot of the freshmen are trying to mock what he did last year, and it’s good to see.”

The Patriot League has seen its fair share of surprises in the past couple seasons. In 2013-14, American was selected to finish 9th in the preseason poll and ended up finishing in second place and won the conference tournament.

In 2015, Holy Cross was selected to finish in eighth place and actually ended up finishing ninth in the standings, but then they rattled off four straight wins in the conference tournament including upset wins over first place Bucknell, fourth place Army and second place Lehigh in the conference championship game to capture their fifth Patriot League title since the turn of the century.

Lafayette knows that in a league filled with upsets, they’re plenty capable of overcoming those low expectations and finding themselves right in the thick of things.

“If we give each team everything we’ve got, I think we’ll win a bunch of games,” Klinewski said. “But if not, we can come out of the game and say we gave it everything we had and just keep getting better. If they keep getting better against good teams, as the season progresses we’ll be a very hard team to beat.”