City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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GLEN MILLS — Mani Sajid has been dealing with something this season. The splendid, lithe 6-foot-5 Plymouth Whitemarsh junior guard has been carrying singular labels on him before he had a chance to do anything singular. Recruiters and high school prognosticators placed a Superman cape on him before he could learn how to become more powerful than a locomotive and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Colonials’ legendary coach Jim Donofrio stressed patience to Sajid, whose recruiting stock continues to rise. Sajid saw, and will continue to see, defenses designed to stop him. There was some frustration early on, Sajid admitted. He put too much pressure on himself. It harmed his game.

He’s grown from that phase.

He is also discovering there is one thing that erases pressure, doubters, and everything else that comes with great potential: Winning.

Sajid is elevating his game at the most important time of the year—the postseason. He dropped 36 against Neshaminy to get Plymouth Whitemarsh to the PIAA District 1 Class 6A quarterfinals, and followed that by scoring 27—eight in the fourth quarter—in leading the No. 5-seeded Colonials by No. 4 Garnet Valley, 72-58, on Friday night.

The Colonials (19-7) advance to the district semifinals against No. 1 seed and defending district champion Lower Merion, 80-56 winners over Central Bucks East, on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in a battle between legendary coached Donofrio and Lower Merion’s Gregg Downer.  

Garnet Valley (18-7) will play CB East in the playback round on Tuesday at Garnet Valley at 7 p.m. for district seeding.

Sajid and Plymouth Whitemarsh’s 6-foot-9 junior Michael Pereira combined to score 47 of the Colonials’ 72 points, with a nice boost from 6-foot sophomore Buddy Denard, who canned four threes, three in the first quarter that gave the Colonials the lead for good.

But it was Sajid that nailed a huge three with 3:51 left to play that put out a Garnet Valley rally that could have placed the Jaguars within 10. He came back two minutes later to hit another trey that sealed the victory for the Colonials.

“People forget this is the first at this for Mani and for Michael as being major-minutes guys,” Donofrio said. “Mani has had teams be real physical with him, he’s faced fancy defenses, and that’s where the struggled began because Mani put a lot of pressure on himself.

“He’s in a new role this year. All the prognosticators over the summer put pressure on a kid. The kids begin to think it’s going to be easy, and I’ve done this a long time, there is nothing easy about it. Mani was supposed to be ‘this guy,’ and Mani had a big bullseye on his back. He was given a reputation before producing it. He’s producing now.”

Entering the Garnet Valley game, the Colonials were coming off their best performance of the season in the Neshaminy victory. Donofrio has been playing 10 players. He likes how this team has evolved. He had heart-to-heart talks with Sajid and Pereira, who was challenged to be more assertive.

He certainly showed it Friday night, lowering his shoulder more than a few times and bucking up against two and sometimes three defenders to slam home dunks and score layups.

“I know no one likes ‘the big guy,’ and maybe (the devil) possessed me tonight, but I won’t go near any holy water just in case,” said Pereira, laughing. “In practice, coach Donofrio, coach Chuck (Moore), even my brother (Will, a PW senior) are constantly after me about playing more aggressive. Since the beginning of the season, I have become more assertive. I have been the only stopping myself. My brother gets angry at me, because I’m the one who got the height (laughs) and that drives me harder.”

Sajid appears to have everything. He can drive, he can pull up, he rebounds and defends. When he put his foot down Friday night, he controlled the game.

“It’s been a long season after a big summer and I’m starting to find my rhythm,” Sajid said. “Everyone was on me, guarding me in different ways and I just had to get used to it. It was frustrating sometimes. I would get hyper. But the guys trust me and the I trust everyone. I’m just playing right now. Coach D and I have had our talks. My confidence is high. I feel comfortable.”

And making every team he faces uncomfortable.

There was some chess going on between two high school hoop wizard coaches, Donofrio and Garnet Valley’s Mike Brown. Garnet Valley was down by as much as 48-25 midway into the third quarter, when the Jags, using some pressure and being buoyed by Jake Sniras and Grayson Golek got to within 58-48 with 4:53 to play.

It's when Sajid hit the Jags with the dagger trey that pushed the margin to 61-48. The Jags’ pressure caused five-straight PW turnovers midway in the fourth quarter.

“Early on, we couldn’t stop (Pereira),” Brown said. “In the first half, we paid attention to Sajid and Pereira, but not enough. In the second half, we did a better job on them, but credit to them, they had other kids step up like (Denard). They are a handful, they’re inside-outside.

“I was proud the way we battled and we didn’t panic. Maybe we should have pressured earlier, but we’re not deep, and we can’t press the whole game. We have CB East next and we’re playing for seeding. I demand effort and my guys gave me that.”   

By Quarter
Plymouth Whitemarsh (19-7): 22 | 17 | 15 | 18 || 72

Garnet Valley (18-7): 13 | 12 | 15 | 18 || 58
Scoring
Plymouth Whitemarsh: Mani Sajid 27, Michael Pereira 20, Buddy Denard 12, Jack Hayes 6, Terron Davis  4, Micah Thompson 3.

Garnet Valley: Jake Sniras 22, Grayson Golek 17, Brady Krautzel 9, Nick Bosch 6, Rohan Bhogadi 3, Luke Faccenda  1.

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 BlueSky here.