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Widener, Arcadia, Swarthmore men all headed to D-III Tournament

02/27/2023, 2:15pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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When Chris Carideo was an assistant coach at the US Merchant Marine Academy — then known as Kings’ Point (N.Y.) —  in 2000-01, the Mariners won the Skyline Conference and earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

For Carideo, that meant almost immediately jumping in his car and driving four hours round-trip to get footage. Before the days of high-speed broadband internet, the only way to get tape of who you were playing was to get it physically, and with a four-day turnaround from the NCAA’s selection show to the first round, that typically meant using the mail. Or getting it yourself.


Dominic Dunn (above) and Widener are going dancing for the first time in 14 years. (Photo courtesy Widener Athletics)

“I don’t even remember where I went,” he said. “We found out who we’re playing, we called someone, and it was like, we could get the tape on Thursday, or we could get it tonight.”

Carideo won’t have to make any such trips this time around. Now the 17th-year head coach at Widener and in the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in that span, he’ll be able to download whatever games he wants almost instantly, using programs like Synergy to see any team’s entire season, with the ability to get even deeper statistical analysis than ever before.

“You go online, go to the film exchange, and you can pick up all their games,” he said. “And there’s a lot of guys that do analytics, scouting reports, if you pay them, they will break everything down, what they’ve done the last five games, how they shoot free throws in the last five minutes, there’s a bunch of stuff out there. 

“The technology’s way, way different.”

Carideo’s Pride, who won the MAC Commonwealth tournament this weekend, are in the NCAA’s Division III men’s basketball tournament for the first time since 2009, the last of three consecutive appearances. They'll play Tufts (19-7), which lost in the NESCAC championship, in a game at Keene State (N.H.) on Friday, the hosts and Baruch (22-5) in the other game.

It’s been a 14-year wait for Carideo, who’s been to the D-III version of March Madness as a player with Widener (1995), an assistant coach and head coach with USMMA and now for the fourth time at Widener, where he also serves as the school’s assistant athletics director and facilities coordinator.

The Pride certainly had to work to get here. Before the season even began, Widener lost two projected starters to injury in junior forward Matt Daulario and grad student AJ Sawyer. But the addition of grad transfer Dominic Dunn from Susquehanna was a big boost, and three other starters returned, while others stepped up to form an eight-man rotation that Carideo has leaned on all year. 

Dunn (18.2 ppg, 7.7 prg, .392 3PT%) has been as good as advertised; fifth-year guard Pat Holden (14.0 ppg), junior wing Kevin Schenck (11.1 ppg), senior wing Steven Matlack (9.4 ppg) and fifth-year forward Kenny Lewis (8.2 ppg, 8.2 rpg) have combined to start 132 out of 135 opportunities. They enter the postseason hot, having won seven of their last eight, taking out Alvernia 74-69 in the title game behind balanced scoring from Lewis (16), Schenk (16), Dunn (15) and Holden (12).

“Getting Dominic Dunn was a great thing for us, because he’s a terrific player and has championship experience at Susquehanna, but losing those two guys, we were wondering like ‘what’s it really going to look like?’” Carideo said. “We do have balance, a lot of guys have stepped up, and we probably played some guys that wouldn’t have played if those two guys had played, and organically over the year built into a team that really relied on each other, they rallied around those two guys who got hurt. 

“A lot of the stuff is out of a coach’s hands, you don’t know how they’re going to react to that stuff. They were devastated when they both got hurt, but they just rallied around it and we had enough talent to find a way to win.”

Widener’s one of three local men’s teams that won their conference championships this past weekend, along with Swarthmore (Centennial) and Arcadia (MAC Freedom); in South Jersey, Rowan (NJAC) also captured its league and will be dancing.


Jalen Watkins (above) and Arcadia are in the NCAA Tournament for only the second time ever. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

That Swarthmore, ranked in the top 15 by D3hoops.com, is going back to March Madness for the sixth consecutive time is not a surprise; the Garnet would have received an at-large bid even if they’d lost to Johns Hopkins this weekend. The Garnet will host SUNY-Delhi (20-8), which won the North Athletic Conference and is going dancing for the first time; St. John Fisher (21-7) and Whitworth (18-9) will also be coming to Delco, the winners of those two games awaiting one another.

But both Widener (19-8) and Arcadia (15-11) had to beat the top seeds in their leagues — Alvernia and DeSales, respectively — on the road to earn their way in.

“I think I’m still in shock,” Arcadia coach Adam Van Zelst said Sunday evening. “it hasn’t sunk in yet, to be honest with you.”

The Knights beat the Bulldogs 74-61 in the Freedom championship on Saturday, the second time in seven days that Arcadia had topped DeSales, after doing so by a point in overtime in the regular-season finale. That earned them a draw with Case Western Reserve (Ohio), which went 21-3 and captured the high-academic University Athletic Association title.

Trailing by a point at halftime in Saturday’s championship, held at DeSales, Van Zelst watched as his team locked down on defense, taking the lead for the final time with more than 13 minutes remaining and growing it to a 12-point advantage with 5:24 left; it was an 11-point game with 2:24 remaining, but Van Zelst still wasn’t comfortable. He’d seen his team lose double-digit leads in each of the previous three games, winning all of them, but not before each of them were tied in the final seconds or went to overtime.

“(I was hoping) we can hold on,” he said with a laugh. “In the back of my mind, I was thinking we actually had this, but there was that creeping doubt in my mind, don’t feel like you’ve won yet. I’ve been doing this long enough, you see everything.”

At the same time that Arcadia was competing for its league title, Van Zelst’s identical twin brother, Ryan Van Zelst, was leading PSU-Abington against Lancaster Bible in the United East championship game, which LBC ultimately won by 11 to go back to the tournament for the first time in five years. 

“Late in the game, with like three or four minutes [left] I’m looking up at my dad, like what’s the score of his game?” he said. “I wasn’t really relaxed until 30 seconds left, I was still trying to see if they were winning, too.”

Arcadia, which is in the NCAA Tournament for only the second time in program history, features senior forward Jalen Watkins (18.7 ppg, 11.1 rpg), sophomore guard Nas Johnson (13.9 ppg), senior guard Justin Money (13.8 ppg, .442 3PT%) and sophomore point guard Dom Vazquez (10.7 ppg), while freshman wing Joshua Okocha (6.0 ppg) rounds out the starting five. 

The Knights enter the postseason on a four-game winning streak with wins in nine of their last 11, having shot 50% from 3-point range in the win over DeSales, committing just six turnovers, a key for a team that averages close to 14 giveaways per game. 

Van Zelst, who’s been to the tournament before as both a player (2010) and assistant coach (2017) at Albright, knows what his team will need to bring to the floor to advance to Saturday’s second round, where anything can happen on the back end of the back-to-back.

“[We’re] happy to be there but I think we can compete,” Van Zelst said. “I think we can play with anyone in the country and it’ll be awesome to find out.”


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