City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2022-23 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 9. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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When they committed to play basketball at Cairn University, Jesse Rivera and Kameron Clark were two high school seniors just happy to play hoops at the next level. 

Rivera, a Central Bucks East grad, and Clark, from Ewing (N.J.), both had solid high school careers, though neither was anything close to a star at the prep level, just cogs in the mechanisms of two successful high school programs. As a senior in 2017-18, Clark averaged about six points per game as a 6-foot-6, 280-pound forward; that same year, Rivera started at point guard for CB East and was solid-yet-unspectacular, left off the 20-man all-Suburban One Continental awards list at the end of the season.

They were headed to play for a Highlanders squad that won eight games in Jason O’Connell’s fourth year, which had bottomed out with a winless season in 2010-11, which hadn’t had a winning year since 2003-04. Expectations, in other words, weren’t exactly high.

“We obviously were an undeveloped program when Coach O’Connell got here, and then when I got here, we hadn’t had a history of success,” Rivera said, adding: “I knew that it was going to be a building process.”

Rivera and Clark picked the right program at the right time. Since arriving on the school’s Bucks County campus four years ago, Rivera and Clark have not just helped Cairn reach three consecutive Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) championship games and one NCAA Tournament, they’ve both become stars at the collegiate level, All-Conference selections who now captain a team with sky-high expectations and its entire rotation back for their fifth and final collegiate seasons.

“When Jesse and Kam came in as freshmen, my first recruiting class were seniors at the time, and that year we made the conference championship,” O’Connell said. “Jesse and Kam, seeing the leadership that we had back then, it helped them grow a lot, and in turn they’ve become those same type of leaders.”

Making it back to March Madness for the second time in four years would be great. But a group of five graduate students, led by Rivera and Clark, have bigger goals in mind.

“There’s a difference between being a good team for a couple years and actually being a good program that’s consistent, year-in, year-out, different classes, people come and go but just keeping the same consistency,” Rivera said. “That’s the emphasis for this year: transitioning to being a good program.”

The Highlanders have been a winning squad ever since Rivera and Clark arrived on campus, the combination of a maturing program and a strong 2020 graduating class, as well as a conference realignment that saw some of the CSAC’s powerhouse programs (Neumann, Cabrini, Gwynedd Mercy) leave and start the new Atlantic East conference. Cairn won 18 games in both 2018-19 and 2019-20, going a combined 21-5 in CSAC play and winning the league title over Centenary (N.J.) in 2020.

Clark and Rivera were both key reserves as sophomores, Clark — slimmed down to 240 pounds and in the best shape of his career — averaging 8.9 ppg and 7.2 rpg, Rivera averaging 4.2 ppg and 2.9 apg, four seniors in the starting lineup that year. They managed to get in a 10-game season during the pandemic year, Clark exploding up to 18.9 ppg and 15.5 rpg, Rivera averaging 6.9 ppg and 5.2 apg. 

Kam Clark (above, 23) dropped 40 pounds in college and has become one of the best rebounders in all of D-III. (Photo courtesy Meredith Jarvis/Cairn Athletics)

A two-sport star, Clark is also a five-year starter for Cairn’s soccer team, where he’s a two-time CSAC Defensive Player of the Year as their goalkeeper.

“We didn’t have the strongest high school careers, and I think we bond a lot over that,” Clark said, “knowing that although we didn’t have strong high school careers, we played for really strong high school programs, and that’s what shaped us to be the players we are today.”

“Our relationship has just grown because we both started out with maybe our physical abilities and our game was behind, but both our work ethics are exactly the same, we love to compete and we love to get better,” Rivera said. “That alone brought us super-close and we workout together all the time, and he’s become my best friend on our team.”

In their first full season as starters last year, Rivera led the team with 13.8 ppg and 82 assists, earning All-CSAC First Team honors. Clark averaged 13.2 ppg and 13.7 rpg, third-best in the country, and was a Second Team selection. The Highlanders went 16-11 overall, 9-5 in the CSAC; five of their losses were by five points or fewer.

“I think being so under-recruited in high school left a chip on both of their shoulders, and now they embrace working hard, being great teammates,” O’Connell said. “I think that was something that shaped both of those guys in the process and helped them become really good players not just in our league but in the entire area.”

Rivera and Clark aren’t alone as fifth-year players for the Highlanders. Their classmate Dashaun Cain (Red Lion Christian, Del.) averaged 10.0 ppg and 6.0 rpg as the team’s No. 3 option last year, and Richard Rosas (Lancaster Mennonite) averaged 4.5 ppg off the bench. Another grad student, former Eastern Mennonite starter Mizz Nyagwegwe (8.1 ppg in 2021-22), joins them for his last year of college hoops.

With the team’s entire rotation back and a few newcomers in the mix — O’Connell expects junior forwards Owen and Derian Bradford, who transferred from Valley Forge to factor into the rotation as well — expectations are high for Cairn, which was picked to finish second in the CSAC preseason poll, behind defending league champs Wilson. 

“No one needs to tell anyone what the sense of urgency is in the season, that’s already understood,” said Rivera, whose younger brothers Christian and Nick are both underclassmen on the Highlanders’ roster. “With a group of experienced guys who have been through winning championships but then also losing them, you understand how important consistency is, and I think that’s just the biggest difference that I see [...] everybody knows what the urgency is like, or what our mindsets need to be to be prepared for the season.”