City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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PHILADELPHIA — The portends of a district championship were there. They came at different times in a variety of ways. For some, the signposts came in an embarrassing season-opening loss. For others, it came with little things, like a unique, secret players-only meeting in planning a milestone that hinted at the specialness this Plymouth-Whitemarsh team could have.

On Saturday at Temple University’s Liacouras Center, it all unfolded in the Colonials’ 59-54 victory over No. 1-seed Spring-Ford in the PIAA District 1 Class 6A championship.

It was Plymouth-Whitemarsh’s first district title since 2016 and legendary coach Jim Donofrio’s second, matching his number of PIAA state championships.

The No. 2-seed Colonials (27-2) received great balanced scoring, getting 18 points each from Qudire Bennett and Chase Coleman, and 16 from Jaden Colzie, 13 of which came in the fourth quarter.

The Plymouth Whitemarsh boys basketball team poses together after winning Saturday's District 1 6A championship over Spring-Ford at the Liacouras Center. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

The Colonials, owners of a 21-game winning streak, were unique this season, because it’s a team that formed and shaped itself as the season progressed. Before the season, Donofrio himself spoke about reinventing himself, how he’s become more loose and far more low-keyed.

He goes back to his 500th career victory, a 78-34 drubbing of Wissahickon back in late-December. He found out his team could defend, and he also found his team came together in a special meeting to make plans to celebrate their coach’s achievement.

That told Donofrio this team would make an investment in itself.

“I didn’t like how this has been sitting the last couple of years, I had to reinvent myself, and I really worked hard at reinventing myself,” Donofrio admitted. “With these guys, I’m much looser. There’s not a ton of yelling. There is very rarely yelling. The last five years the kids have changed, the pressures have changed, it takes a lot to do this.

“I never brought up the 500 wins. It was the players who created that moment, holding a team in the 30s in that game, and we scored almost 80. This group took ownership of this team.”

For Bennett and Colzie, their indicator came in the Colonials’ 76-52 season-opening loss to Roman Catholic on December 2 at Holy Family.

“I knew we would be a good team right after the Roman loss,” Colzie said. “We were down by four against them and fell apart in the fourth quarter, but that game was far closer than what the score said. It is strange, I know, that it was after a loss we could do this.

“That told me we were there. No one in the district had an answer for us.”

Bennett felt the ownership of the team had to fall on him and the rest of the team leaders.

“The past years, when I was a freshman and Jaden was in eighth grade, Coach D wasn’t feeling it and there was slack with the program. I knew it would be different when we came here,” Bennett said. “After the Roman loss, we hung with them for three quarters, and I’ll never forget Coach D telling us the game is 32 minutes long and we had to understand how to fight in the fourth quarter. Since that loss, we’ve been nonstop. We were down by four and lost by 20. We woke up after the Roman loss.”

Donofrio’s message came through. The Colonials would look like they would run away, and Spring-Ford would crawl back. Plymouth-Whitemarsh would go on a mini-run, and the Rams would punch back.

What Spring-Ford could not do, especially in the fourth quarter, was shut down Colzie, who went 5-for-5 from the floor in the last quarter to put the Colonials in charge.

“We could have buckled, that’s their game, they have these little flurries of five, six, seven points and ultimately that flurry that Colzie had in the late fourth quarter was the one that did us in,” said Spring-Ford coach Joe Dempsey, who in his second season has done wonderous things for the Spring-Ford program, bringing the Rams to their first district championship game. “But that's their team, you think you sort of have them contained and you have them sort of under control and it was a late flurry and it sort of did us in, we didn't recover from that one.

“But I told the guys in the locker room, they could have buckled several times, we were down six, seven, eight, we just made a play, made a shot, made some foul shots, got to the rim. I'm just proud of my guys, it's just been a delightful group of kids to coach, I feel bad for them, they're really upset but you know, hopefully they're proud and can look back in a couple weeks and say ‘Hey, that was pretty good.’”

Up 56-54 with 15.4 seconds left, it was Bennett who sealed with victory by canning three of four free throws for the Colonials, who never trailed after 12 first-half lead changes.

“We should have been the No. 1 seed,” Bennett said. “We needed to prove that. We learned to fight in the fourth quarter.”

Donofrio took his team out to dinner after the game.

“I’m going to make sure I sit back and enjoy this one,” he said.

By Quarter

Plymouth-Whitemarsh (27-2):  14 | 18 | 6  | 21 ||  59

Spring-Ford (25-3):  14   | 10 |  10  |  20 ||  54

Scoring

Spring-Ford: Jacob Nguyen 20, Caleb Little 10, Zach Zollers 10, EJ Campbell 5, Alex Lewis 5, Tommy Kelly 4.

Plymouth-Whitemarsh: Qudire Bennett 18, Chase Coleman 18, Jaden Colzie 16, Lincoln Sharpe 4, Jah Pendergrass-Sayles 3.

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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.