City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
__

PLYMOUTH MEETING — Jim Donofrio, the legendary Plymouth-Whitemarsh coach, likes to keep his eye on everything. In his silver anniversary season as head coach of the Colonials nothing slides by him.

On Wednesday, something did.

His team convened for a secret meeting back in their locker room among themselves after practice. They knew what was approaching. The team leaders gathered everyone up and spoke candidly about winning one emphatically for the old man and one of their teammates, junior Luke Winterbottom, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer.

Maybe it’s why there seemed to be an aura surrounding the Colonials when they took the court Thursday night against visiting Wissahickon in a Suburban One League Liberty Division game.

In their best game so far this season, Plymouth-Whitemarsh left no doubt in blowing by Wissahickon, 78-34, to get Donofrio his 500th career victory at PW.

Colonial 6-4 senior Qudire Bennett led the way with a game-high 28, followed by 16 from junior point guard Jaden Colzie and 10 from Chase Coleman, while senior guard Earl Stout topped Wissahickon with 14.

As the final seconds ticked away, Donofrio was mobbed by his team, and over 30 of his former players who came back to congratulate their former coach.

“We were really fired up, really fired up,” Bennett said. “We knew how much this meant to coach Donofrio. So, on Wednesday, we all got together and talked about how we needed to win this for coach and for Luke, who’s fighting cancer right now.

“Luke is doing really well. Every game we’re doing it for Luke, and we had to get coach Donofrio his 500. This is the best we’ve played this year. We need to bottle this. After practice, on Wednesday, coach Donofrio likes to stay out on the gym for a good 10, 15 and we all got back in the dressing room, and we all talked about what this game means for him.

“It motivated us to come out the way we did. We punched them right in the mouth and kept our foot on the pedal.”

Donofrio was very serene afterward. Everyone around seemed to get more of a kick that he reached No. 500 than he did.  As his former and current players were walking through the hallway outside the Colonials’ dressing room, everyone had to make sure they gave him a hug, or a pat on the back as they left.

Donofrio, the son of the fabled Al Donofrio, creator of the Donofrio Classic, took a relatively late turn in life to reach this destination. There were plenty hours of sacrifice spent driving to games, studying game film, and countless hours working with his players on Saturday summer mornings.  

“I wasn’t sure how (the team) would react, they were a little quiet before we went out (to the court) and I was thinking maybe that they were putting a little pressure on themselves,” Jim said. “They were fabulous. That’s the fun of this. It was great to see a lot of the guys coming back. I’m a big believer in the basketball gods that you don’t upset the cart.

“This gives me peace of mind and it validates a lot of things, when you see how well this team played tonight and for all of our former guys coming back. I appreciate the value of investing in people. Tonight, it was great to see all of these coming back.”

George Wadlin, who goes way back as an assistant to Donofrio and was inducted into the Montgomery County coaches Hall of Fame in 2017, retired in 2014. Donofrio’s current team doesn’t know Wadlin, who addressed the Colonials recently and asked something simple: Count to 500 slowly and see how long it takes, and the game prep that goes into all of those games?

“It’s a very rich life when you do this for a while and you see the impact it has,” Donofrio said. “When you go that long, you have to keep reinventing yourself. I’m actually enjoying coaching more right now in a lot of ways than in the past, and you realize you have to talk to the guys today a little differently.

“When you go 32 years overall, 25 years as a head coach, it’s easy to get cynical, it’s easy to get jaded. Coaching these kids is still the most important thing that I can do. Doing this forces you to be the best person that you can be.”

Thursday night marked the best Colonials were this season.

The game was over by halftime. Well, the game was actually over within the first four minutes. The Colonials wanted to make a statement for their coach and they did—going into intermission with a commanding 48-24 lead.

Bennett had as many points as the whole Wissahickon team after two quarters, with 24 points on 9 of 14 shooting. Bennett started hot, hitting his first four shots, including a few NBA-length three-pointers and finished the first quarter with 14 points on 5 of 7 shooting.

The Colonials established a torrid pace early and never looked back. PW got out to a 14-2 lead, while Wissahickon struggled to get a shot off. Within the first four minutes, the Trojans turned the ball over five times and were a collective 1-of-7 shooting.

Meanwhile, no one got out on Bennett, who each time he raised up to shoot there was little doubt on his face the shot was going down—and it did at an incredible rate.

The Trojans had to play a perfect game to win.

“We knew that, and when you play a game like that, having gone against Jimmy for 25 years, if you take away one thing, you leave another open,” Wissahickon coach Kyle Wilson said. “They like to play downhill, and it didn’t seem like we were taking anything way. Bennett was on fire.

“You have to pick your poison. We left outside and he had to hit four or five—and Bennett hit four or five. That was it. As soon as we fell behind, we began playing PW-style basketball, quick transition up and down and they have the horses.

“We played their game. Our lack of poise was frustrating. We tried to beat them at their own game. They dictated every part of the game. My son-in-law (Brandon Brown) played for Jimmy on his last state championship team in 2010. I made sure I congratulated Jimmy afterward and told him how well his kids played. He told me he didn’t expect them to play that well.”

It's because Donofrio wasn’t aware of the pact they made with each other.

They were going to do it for the old man.  

By Quarter

Wissahickon (2-5/2-3 Suburban One Liberty):  10   |  14  |  5  | 5 ||  34

Plymouth-Whitemarsh (6-1/5-0):  24   |  24  |  18  |  12 ||  78

Scoring
Wissahickon: Earl Stout 14, Jaylon Williams 9, Owen Coughlin 7, Brayden Ryan 3, Andy Yun 1.

Plymouth-Whitemarsh: Qudire Bennett 28, Jaden Colzie 16, Chase Coleman 10, Lincoln Sharpe 7, Rodney Willis 6, Ben Marsico 5, Jimmy Flowers 3, Jan Pendergrass-Sayles 2, Josh Harris 1.

~~~

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.