By David Comer
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Swarthmore College men’s basketball coach Landry Kosmalski has built one of the top Division III programs in the country since taking over before the 2012-13 season. His teams have won at least 20 games in each of the last eight seasons and have reached the NCAA tournament seven straight times. He also has led the Garnet to the NCAA final four twice.
But this season has been a different experience for Kosmalski.
“We’ve completely changed our style of play,” he said. “It’s been a real process.”
Zander Jiminez (above) has come on strong for Swarthmore. (Photo courtesy Swarthmore College)
Kosmalski said that Swarthmore is pressing after makes and misses, trying to push the ball on offense at every chance, and subbing every two minutes with what he calls “hockey substitutions.” They have 12 players who average at least 7.4 minutes per game and seven who play at least 21.5 minutes per game.
“The guys have been amazing at learning, tweaking, adjusting,” he said. “At different points, we’ve hit our stride. Our guys have been able to adjust. They’ve been great.”
The Garnet are playing their best basketball as of late. They have won five of six and two in a row to improve to 13-6 overall and 5-2 in the Centennial Conference. With six league games left before the playoffs, they are in a three-way tie for third place behind second-place Gettysburg College and league leader Johns Hopkins University.
A large part of Swarthmore’s success can be attributed to a freshman and a junior from California.
The freshman is 6-foot-3 guard Zander Jimenez, who is from Hercules, Calif., which is in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jimenez, despite only starting two games this season, is leading the team in scoring at 14.4 points per game to go along with 4.5 rebounds per game.
“Zander’s been great,” Kosmalski said. “The best thing about him is that he has been a great teammate. He’s just doing what he can to help the team. He’s taking what the defense gives him. I think his greatest strength is his composure. He’s got really good composure. He doesn’t get sped up. He has a really good pace to him. He plays to a speed he’s comfortable playing.”
Kosmalski said he never saw Jimenez play in person until he arrived on campus. He credits associate head coach Shane Loeffler for discovering Jimenez at a camp over the summer at Dartmouth College.
“He wasn’t really recruited at our level,” Kosmalski said. “He ended up coming to us late in the recruiting process. I knew he came from a really good high school program with a really good coach.”
Jimenez played for a Salesian Prep team that went 31-2 and advanced to the state championship game last season. Their coach, Bill Mellis, has won nearly 700 games and two state championships.
“Zander totally surprised us when he got here with his overall ability and his ability to pick things up quickly,” Kosmalski said.
The junior from California is 6-foot-1 guard Cal Hanson from Sonora, Calif., about 130 miles east of San Francisco. He has been a starter since arriving at Swarthmore two seasons ago when he was an integral part of a veteran team that reached the NCAA D-III Final Four.
“He’s been great,” Kosmalski said. “His progression has been really steady. When he was a freshman, I knew he would be in the right spot on offense and make the right rotation on defense.”
Hanson’s scoring average has increased from 5.3 points per game as freshman to 7.8 as a sophomore to 9.6 this season. He is averaging 25.5 minutes per game this season and flying around the court on defense.
“He doesn’t get tired,” Kosmalski said.
The Garnet have a third player on the roster from California in 6-foot-5 sophomore guard Ryan Chu, who is from Irvine, Calif. He is averaging 9.2 minutes and 2.1 points per game and is one of the many players who Swarthmore relies upon to play its new brand of supercharged basketball for 40 minutes each game.
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Crime does pay
Two local women’s players rank in the top 10 nationally in steals per game.
Ava Possenti (above) is fifth in D-III at 4.05 steals per game. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)
Ava Possenti, a junior guard for Ursinus College, ranks 5th in Division III with 4.05 steals per game. Possenti, who attended Garnet Valley High, started her college career at Cabrini University before the school announced its closure.
In less than two full seasons with the Bears, Possenti has already collected 133 steals and ranks 13th all-time in program history. She has seven games this season with at least five steals.
“She’s by far the best defender I’ve ever coached in my entire career,” Ursinus coach Bobbi Morgan said earlier this season. “I’ve never seen anyone like her. She’s a freak of nature. She gets steals. She does not foul. She’s phenomenal.”
Haley Keenan, a graduate student at Delaware Valley University, ranks 6th in Division III with 3.95 steals per game. Keenan, a guard and product of Bensalem High, is the school’s all-time leader with 353 career steals and counting. She has also scored 1,636 career points to rank third all-time at DelVal, trailing only all-time leading scorer Jeanne Waznak (1,865 career points) and Eireann Anastasi (1,744) with six regular-season games and the postseason left.
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Player Efficiency Rating
The website D3Data lists the top 250 Division III men’s and women’s players using a statistic called Player Efficiency Rating, or “PER.” The website quotes John Hollinger, the creator of PER, in describing PER as follows: “PER sums up all a player’s positive accomplishments, subtracts the negative accomplishments, and returns a per-minute rating of a player’s performance.”
Locally, there are several men’s and women’s players who rank among the top 250.
For the men, Trevor Wall of Ursinus College ranks 57th with a 28.0 PER followed by Jimenez of Swarthmore (79th / 27.2 PER), Mike Marable of Gwynedd Mercy University (121st / 26.2 PER), and Shawn Summers Jr. of Gwynedd Mercy (246th / 23.8 PER).
For the women, Chinwe Irondi of Ursinus is sixth with a 46.5 PER followed by Reese Mullins of Immaculata University (79th / 32.9 PER), Mia Robbins of Widener University (92nd / 32,2 PER), and Emily DuPont of Neumann University (133rd / 30.3 PER)
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Dupriest a double-double machine for Neumann
Donte Dupriest, a 6-foot-4 junior forward for the Neumann men’s basketball team, has continued his impressive play since joining the team midway through the season. He has played in eight games for the Knights and has recorded a double-double in each one. In his last two games, he recorded 22 points and 21 rebounds in a win over Gwynedd Mercy and 30 points and 21 rebounds in a victory over Marywood University. For the season, Dupriest, a Bartram High grad who transferred in from Cochise College in Arizona, is averaging a team-best 18.8 points and 15.9 rebounds per game. His 15.9 rebounds per game would rank him first nationally in Division III if he played enough games to qualify. Neumann is 15-5 overall and 6-1 in the Atlantic East Conference,
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Layups
In our regular update as to where Irondi ranks on Ursinus’ all-time women’s scoring list, she is still in second place but is up to 1,696 career points. The senior forward trails only Ellen Cosgrove (1,878). With five regular-season games and the postseason left, Irondi needs 183 points to become the program’s top scorer. … Charlie Thornton, who was a key contributor on Radnor High’s 2022-23 team that finished 29-1 and reached the PIAA Class 5A semifinals, is a sophomore reserve for 13th-ranked Randolph-Macon College. Thornton, a 6-foot-4 sophomore forward, has played in 17 games, with one start, this season for the Yellow Jackets, who are 17-3 overall and have won 14 straight. Thornton is averaging 7.9 minutes, 2.3 points and 1.9 rebounds for Randolph-Macon, a school of about 1,500 students located in Ashland, Va. … Maria McCallen, a 6-foot forward for Franciscan University and Cardinal O’Hara product, is having a breakout season and has been a bright spot for the 2-18 Barons. She is averaging a team-best 19.3 points and 7.9 rebounds per game and set a program single-game scoring record with 34 points against Geneva College. She also ranks 114th nationally in PER. Franciscan is located in Steubenville, Ohio, and has an enrollment of about 3,750 students. … Neumann guard Bryan Etienne, a 6-foot-2 junior from Coral Springs, Fla., was named the Atlantic East Conference player of the week on Monday after scoring 21 points on 7-for-8 shooting with five rebounds, four blocks and three assists in a win over Marywood. … Wall, a senior guard, was named the Centennial Conference player of the week on Monday after averaging 20.5 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in two wins for Ursinus. This is the third time Wall has won the award this season.
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