City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Ben Robinson looked up and saw nothing but a sea of green beckoning to him.

The Conestoga student section, decked out in a combination of Eagles and St. Paddy’s Day gear — a nod to the school’s location on Irish Avenue in Berwyn — was silent on the baseline at Saint Joseph’s Hagan Arena, hands raised to the sky, the Plymouth Whitemarsh students roaring at the other end with just under six seconds left in overtime of the 2025 District 1 6A title game.

No. 3 Conestoga was clinging to a two-point lead, No. 5 Plymouth Whitemarsh having come up with an answer every other time it looked like it might be down and out. Robinson, with four decades of pressure on his shoulders, didn’t let his Pioneer peers down.

“I’m not really thinking about what moment I’m in, I’m just thinking about putting the ball in the basket and that mindset helps me,” the Conestoga senior said. “We work on free-throws every day, so I have confidence at the line that I’m going to hit the shots.”

The ‘Stoga senior point guard was flush on both, the finishing touches on Conestoga’s 54-50 overtime win over Plymouth Whitemarsh for the 2025 District 1 6A championship.

Ben Robinson (21) celebrates with Rowan Miller (left) at the buzzer. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

It’s Conestoga’s first boys basketball district title since winning it in 1987.

“As a Conestoga alum myself, someone who grew up in this community, moved back here after college, I couldn’t be more proud and happy for our community, to bring this home,” said Conestoga head coach Sean Forcine, the third-year head coach who spent the prior 16 as an assistant under Mike Troy. “No one gives us a chance, every year, in and out. They always think if Conestoga as an undersized, kind of soft school that can’t really close it out. 

“That mentality’s changed, and thanks to our players, we’re back on the board. We’re a force to be reckoned with.”

The Pioneers (21-6), seeded No. 3 in the district, made that clear by beating the likes of Lower Merion and Garnet Valley in the regular season. Any doubters that remained had to be convinced after Conestoga beat No. 2 Coatesville in the semifinals and then PW in Friday’s championship, played in front of a nearly full house at Hagan Arena.

In each of their last two games, Conestoga faced a significant size disadvantage in the post and seemed like the underdog on paper — seedings aside, Plymouth Whitemarsh featured the game’s only current Division I recruit in junior wing Mani Sajid and a 6-foot-10 post on a tear in Michael Pereira, who had scored at least 20 in each of PW’s first three district playoff wins. ‘Stoga countered with 6-4 Cory Hogan up front, leading a squad full of small-college recruits.

And yet it was Hogan who finished with a game-high 17 points for Conesotga on 8-of-10 shooting, grabbing seven rebounds, the rest of the Conestoga starting lineup all contributing in a major way. 

Junior point guard Rowan Miller scored 13 points with seven rebounds, six assists, and three steals. Robinson scored 10 points with three rebounds, assists and steals each, he and Miller doing much of the ball-handling against the PW press. Junior wing Shane O’Brien added nine points, four rebounds and two assists, and senior wing Sam Gibbs scored five points and grabbed two rebounds while using his length well defensively on Sajid. 

“I couldn’t be more proud of our boys. We’re the ultimate definition of a team,” Forcine said. “This is a physical and mentally tough team. We can go up against 6-9 guys all game long and I’ll take our undersized players because they’ve got heart and they’ve got will and they put in the work to put as strong, physically and mentally as possible since last season.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh coach Jim Donofrio was left looking for his third district title, his Colonials’ recent momentum stopped cold. They’d beaten No. 21 Neshaminy by 39 in the second round of districts and had done well against No. 4 Garnet Valley in the quarterfinals and top-seeded Lower Merion in the semifinals, Sajid and Pereira doing their thing at a high level. But it didn’t translate to the title game, except in brief spurts.

“You look like you got it figured out — widespread margin of victory on Neshaminy, follow that up with Garnet Valley, the look in the eyes of confidence, the energy, the bounce,” Donofrio said. “I just think the kids got a little bit regressed from earlier in the season with losing about 5% edginess, not understanding if I’m Conestoga and I just beat Coatesville at Coatesville, they’re going to be in the mindset we’re in: we can beat the world.”

As the second seed out of District 1, Plymouth Whitemarsh will play in the ‘western’ side of the 6A bracket, its first-round game likely going to be at home against Wilson (19-6), the No. 5 seed from District 3. Conestoga will host its own first-round game on March 8 (Saturday), against Mechanicsburg (20-3), the No. 6 seed from District 3 after it was upset in its district quarterfinals.

The sizable crowd on hand Friday was treated to a good one, less of a back-and-forth contest than an accordion-style one which saw Conestoga take multiple leads only for Plymouth Whitemarsh to close the gap each time. 

‘Stoga owned most of the first half, hitting 6-of-12 from downtown to open up a 26-17 gap at the break, an edge that grew to 30-17 a couple minutes into the third. But Plymouth Whitemarsh controlled the next five minutes, a 15-2 run tying it up before. Miller gave Conestoga the lead back with one foul shot going into the fourth. The Pioneers re-extended the lead to five with four to play, then the Colonials reeled it back to within one. 

“We talked about poise — this isn’t the first game we’ve been pressured, we’ve seen this a lot,” Forcine said. “Yeah, we threw the ball away once or twice, but one or two plays doesn’t faze our players. They’re mentally strong, and if you notice, we got out of that funk pretty quick.”

The last minute of regulation saw Conestoga take the lead twice only for PW to tie it both times. Sajid, who led PW with 20 points, hit a pull-up 3-pointer to tie with just under a minute remaining. Then, after Hogan rumbled down the lane for a bucket with about 30 seconds remaining, Pereira’s second-chance layup tied it with 5.6 seconds remaining. 

Miller was the hero early in overtime, hitting a pair of foul shots to put Conestoga up two and then, after PW’s Micah Thompson (6 points) tied it up with two of his own, got the roll on an aggressive take down the lane to break the tie for the final time. 

Robinson extended the lead to four with two foul shots of his own with 1:11 left. Sajid answered with a mid-range jumper, then Miller back with two foul shots with 26.6 seconds remaining. PW’s Buddy Denard hit yet another big shot, a 3-pointer to cut it to one point with 18.9 seconds remaining. 

That set up Robinson’s all-important trip to the line. He was fouled with 10.6 seconds left, hit the first and missed the second — but O’Brien tied up a PW player on the rebound, giving possession back to Conestoga. Robinson got back to the line with 5.7 seconds left, this time making both. 

“Once I hit the second, I don’t think they had any timeouts, so I knew the game was over,” he said. “The feeling of being able to win a district championship when no one expected us to is crazy.”

By Quarter
Conestoga: 16  |  10  |   7   |  10  |  11  ||  54
Plymouth:    9   |   8   |  15  |  11  |   7   ||  50

Shooting
Conestoga: 17-36 FG (6-16 3PT), 14-16 FT
Plymouth: 21-51 FG (4-20 3PT), 4-5 FT

Scoring
Conestoga: Cory Hogan 17, Rowan Miller 13, Ben Robinson 10, Shane O’Brien 9, Sam Gibbs 5

Plymouth: Mani Sajid 20, Michael Pereira 10, Buddy Denard 8, Micah Thompson 6, Terron Davis 6