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Neshaminy's Reese Zemitis picks Bucknell

04/17/2023, 9:45am EDT
By Andrew Robinson

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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There’s one thing about Reese Zemitis that both confounds her coach John Gallagher and tells him everything he needs to know about her.

Everyone who seems to cross paths with the Neshaminy junior comes away impressed and really seeming to like her, even if those people happen to be some of her fiercest opponents on the court. So Gallagher had to chuckle when some of the first replies coming in to her big announcement Sunday night were from those same opponents, all offering sincere plaudits to the talented forward.

Over the last two years, Zemitis had impressed a lot of college coaches and programs as well and while a lot of those programs left the same favorable impression on her, one stood a little bit more.


Neshaminy 2024 wing/forward Reese Zemitis announced her commitment to Bucknell on Sunday. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Zemitis announced her college decision on Sunday, committing to join Bucknell following her senior year at Neshaminy.

“Bucknell gave me the full picture I wanted in a school,” Zemitis, a first team All-SOL Patriot selection this winter, said. “I wanted to be able to enjoy basketball, that’s obviously a huge part about it, but also everything academically. 

“The school is great, I know I’ll have a great education and beyond that relationships and connections there, it’s so important.”

Seeing arch-rival Pennsbury or a Souderton program they've battled multiple times over the years be among the first to offer congrats or promote Zemitis was not surprising to Gallagher, mystifying as it may be.

"Her opponents just love her and I can't figure it out," Gallagher said. "She kicks their behinds, but she doesn't do it in a flaunting way at all and it's crazy, she's just a really good kid who everybody pulls for. Seeing the comments on Instagram or Twitter, it's her fiercest opponents that are out there the happiest for her."

There’s a lot to like about Zemitis solely based on what she can do on a basketball court. A 6-foot-1 athlete with a prolific perimeter game who also brings an eye for creation and unselfishness, an improving interior game and a want to play defense, there were a lot of reasons that she’s been piling up Division I offers the last few years.

Start adding in everything else, and it’s even easier to see why programs from all over were vying to get Zemitis onto their roster. Gallagher’s known Zemitis for a long time — he started working with her in sixth grade and now coaches her at Neshaminy and with the Mid-Atlantic Magic — so when the offers started to come in, he knew Zemitis would be able to handle it.

“The respect she’s earned from teammates, coaches and even opponents really speaks volumes to how she’s viewed as a student-athlete,” Gallagher said. “In several articles over the past two years, Lola Ibarrondo has consistently used the word ‘trust’ to describe playing with Reese and I’m not sure there’s a better comment for a teammate to give another teammate other than saying ‘I trust her.’”

Trust is big for Zemitis but so is loyalty. She’s stayed with the Magic since third grade, sticking with many of the same girls she came into the program with and also showed the same loyalty to her team at Neshaminy, not entertaining the thought of transferring to another program even as her profile started to grow.

Bucknell extended an offer to Zemitis in June of 2022 when she visited the campus and the Bison staff stayed in contact throughout. As the relationship started to grow, something that jumped out to Zemitis was how earnest the Bucknell staff was with her whether it was highlighting strengths or noting areas she needed to improve.

“As soon as I stepped onto the campus, I had a really good feeling, it almost felt right,” Zemitis said. “Everyone says you get that gut feeling, but it’s very true. I could feel the connection and the coaches, they were very straight-up and honest, which I appreciate because I look for that.

“I don’t want somebody who’s going to be unrealistic with my ability because the goal is to go in and make an impact and play.”


Zemitis wanted to make her decision early to enjoy her last season of grassroots basketball. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

In September, as college programs were rolling into Neshaminy's open gyms, Gallagher and Zemitis talked about her recruiting process and where she was. Gallagher respects Zemitis enough that he left the decision making to her, but he wanted to be a resource and she said he always had the right questions to ask for a call with a coach or a visit to a campus.

Actually, Gallagher said he encouraged any coaches that contacted him to call Zemitis and speak to her because he knew she’d handle it perfectly. The junior said her goal was to make a decision before the first open period of the AAU season, wanting to go into her last go-round with the Magic able to just enjoy it, which she was able to do.

“I was excited about Bucknell but there were some schools that offered other things that maybe Bucknell necessarily did not, so it was a matter of weighing out the pros and cons,” Zemitis said. “I felt that Bucknell gave me the better pros over any cons that the others did not, so it was really just what fit me best. Everything there just stood out to me.”

Zemitis started out playing soccer and basketball, she was mostly a goalkeeper or center midfielder on the pitch and actually had more of an affinity for soccer until sixth grade. However, once she started to see how much room she had to grow in basketball and just how good she could be, her priorities switched.

“The more relationships I made in basketball, the more I enjoyed it,” Zemitis said. “Playing basketball became such a fun environment and I knew I didn’t want to stop playing after high school.”

Gallgher sees Zemitis as a stretch four in the college game, her ability to shoot the ball at a high percentage as a calling card and she agreed that her outside shooting will probably be her biggest strength. That hasn’t stopped Gallagher from asking Zemitis to do a lot more than that or the forward from wanting to be a fully versatile player.

This season with Neshaminy, Gallagher asked Zemitis to move her game inside more with the team having a few other good outside shooters who needed someone to draw attention inside. One of the first things Gallagher noticed about Zemitis was how communicative she was, even as a sixth grader, and he knew if she was already that adept at something a lot of high school-aged players struggle with, she’d be able to see how rounding out her game would not only help her, but her teammates.

Zemitis appreciates that Gallagher coaches her hard because she knows it’s all meant to help her. In the same way she looks at playing for Neshaminy and the Magic as good opportunities to blend different styles and different teammates to pick up something here or there that may help later on.

“She’s grown her game each year,” Gallagher said. “Adding that skill to her game made us a better team, it allowed her teammates to shoot from the outside with little or no contest as players had to help inside on Reese. Our three-point shooting as a team went up a lot and I attribute that a lot to Reese getting assists out of the post area.”

Zemitis and her Magic teammates got their AAU season started off right with a 4-0 showing at this week’s HGSL NJ Warm-Up event. Saying she felt relieved of the stress that comes with making a college decision, Zemitis is really excited to enjoy this last ride with the organization that’s supported her every step of the way and teammates she truly enjoys playing with.

Next year, she’ll add her name to the program’s 1,000-point scorer list pretty early on as she, Ibarrondo and the other returning players aim to build off back-to-back state playoff appearances. 

“What I learned through this is just to go with your gut,” Zemitis said. “There are always going to be people saying things like you should have went here or there but it’s really about what you want. They don’t have to go to school for you, so once I realized that and I focused on what’s best for me, that’s when it became easy and clear, like, ‘Ok, this is me. This is where I fit in.’”


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