City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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ARDMORE — As Jaden Colzie stood in the student section at the Liacouras Center last March watching the Plymouth Whitemarsh girls capture a District 1-6A championship, he couldn’t help but picture himself out on the floor.

He and teammate Qudire Bennett hung around Temple’s arena for the District 1 boys title game right after and knew they had to find a way to get back there themselves in 2023 after watching Lower Merion knock off Norristown for its second straight title.

“I was standing right there in the student section, and I’m like, ‘This is going to be us next year. I need to get here.’ Hey, one year later and here we are,” Colzie said. “I was really jealous — Norristown, Lower Merion — I was like we can be here, and we’re here, so I’m happy for us.”

The two-time defending champion Aces stood in the Colonials’ way of a trek down to North Philadelphia as the two district powers met up on Tuesday night in a district semifinal. 

Helped by 19 points from junior Chase Coleman, 16 from junior Colzie and timely scoring from senior Bennet, who finished with 12, third-seeded Plymouth Whitemarsh held off second-seeded Lower Merion for a 64-58 win despite 25 points from LM senior Sam Brown.

Plymouth Whitemarsh guard Jaden Colzie hits a three in front of the Lower Merion student section during Tuesday's District 1-6A semifinal at Lower Merion. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

The Colonials will face top-seeded Spring-Ford, a winner over Downingtown West, on Saturday at 6 p.m. at Temple’s Liacouras Center in the District 1 championship game for the first time since 2018, searching for the program’s first district title since 2016.

“When I got the rebound and the clock hit zero, I was like, ‘We going to Temple baby,’” Bennett said. “Since 2018 we haven’t been to Temple, but me and my team all called it since summer, ‘We going to Temple this year.’ One chip at a time. Like we said, ‘We going to Temple.’ No matter who is in front of us, we’re going to beat that team and move on to the next and we beat the top dogs.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh lost to Abington as the No. 3 seed in their District 1 opener during Colzie’s freshman season in 2021 and followed with a run to the district quarterfinals as a No. 22 seed last season. Bennett, a four-year varsity player, and Colzie, a three-year varsity starter, knew this summer their team had a chance to take a step forward and do something special. 

The Colonials co-captains got even more excited when they found out Coleman, who spent last season at Keystone Academy, would join them for their run at a district title.

Coleman had 26 points in the Colonials’ district opening win against Penn Wood. He added 15 more as PW (26-2) rolled in a district quarterfinal win over North Penn last Friday. 

After a Sam Brown triple to start the second period expanded on Lower Merion’s 16-14 first-quarter lead, Coleman took over once in Tuesday night’s semifinal. He scored 11 points and assisted on a pair of Colzie threes in the frame, having a hand in 17 of his team’s 20 points to give PW a 34-25 halftime lead on a late putback.

“I feel like Chase coming in, it just made something different,” Colzie said. “It’s just three elite scorers that we have, and the rest everyone knows how to play their role. We’re all unselfish.

“They were guarding Q from the jump, so me and Chase had to step up as scorers.”

The Colonials scored the first five points of the third quarter to jump out to a 39-25 lead. Lower Merion (22-5) senior forward John Mobley scored seven straight points in the third, including a putback slam to keep PW from running away, but the Colonials were still up double digits, 47-36, heading into the fourth.

Senior wing Sam Wright helped the Aces chip away at the deficit when he scored seven of his 11 points in the final period, one of his jumpers cutting the PW lead to 53-49 with four minutes left.

PW's Chase Coleman, left, and Lower Merion's Justin Poles dive for a loose ball in front of LM's Owen McCabe on Tuesday (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Bennett, a 1,000-point scorer who's been one of the top scoring threats in District 1 this season, had been quiet himself up to that point, but he helped the Colonials come up with a response. Bennett scored two putbacks during an 8-0 PW run, which also included a huge bucket by junior Jahseir Sayles, to put the Colonials back up 12, 61-49, with less than two minutes left.

“I knew they were going to take me away from the jump,” said Bennett, who secured six of his eight rebounds in the fourth. “But I knew once the second half started to kick in, they were going to lose me and get tired, so that was my turn to pick up the junk points, the scrap points to help my teams and get hard-fought rebounds.”

Brown had 11 through the game’s first eight and a half minutes, but the Colonials kept him relatively in check until late in the fourth. A Brown three around the one-minute marker cut the deficit to five then a Brown take pulled the Aces within three, 61-58, with 43.2 seconds left.

While the Colonials finished 5-for-13 from the foul line in the fourth, junior Ben Marsico knocked down a pair with 38 seconds left to make it a two-possession game and help punch PW’s ticket to Temple.

“We knew it was going to be a good game, hard-fought game, but I knew ever since we stepped in the building they didn’t want it more than us,” Bennett said. “We had an extra gear, extra heart, every single way.”

“We just have an extra gear that no other team in District 1 has. That’s the difference,” he added.

PW brought a large student contingent with it on Tuesday that made Lower Merion’s Kobe Bryant Memorial Gymnasium feel like home, particularly when that crowd, dressed in all black, filled onto the court to celebrate after the game.

Colzie’s expecting an even bigger crowd on Saturday as he and the Colonials try to bring the district title back to PW.

“This is all I’ve been waiting for for the past three years of my career here at PW,” Colzie said. “This is all I wanted, when I seen that clock winding down, I’m like, ‘We did it,’ but we’re still not done. We still got one more to go.”

By Quarter

Plymouth Whitemarsh: 14 | 20 | 13 | 17 || 64

Lower Merion: 16 | 9 | 11 | 22 || 58

Scoring

Plymouth Whitemarsh: Chase Coleman 19, Jaden Colzie 16, Qudire Bennett 11, Lincoln Sharpe 9, Jahseir Sayles 7, Ben Marsico 2.

Lower Merion: Sam Brown 25, Sam Wright 11, John Mobley 9, Justin Poles 6, Teddy Pendergrass III 3, Jordan Meekins 2, Owenn McCabe 2.