City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Zack Yonda still has the letters Landry Kosmalski wrote. 

A 2014 Conestoga grad, Yonda went on to a standout career at Swarthmore

“I was recruited by him, really, really hard at Stoga,” Yonda told CoBL, “and he wrote me letters every couple of weeks [...] and in the letters he wrote about all the things we ended up doing at Swarthmore. And that was a time where those things didn’t seem possible.”

At a school that had never experienced any form of basketball success, Kosmalski was a program-changer. His arrival and subsequent build of the program revitalized not just the Garnet men’s basketball program but the community around it — but all great things must come to an end.

After news broke on social media last week, Swarthmore confirmed Monday morning that Kosmalski was leaving to take a job as a Division I assistant coach at Campbell University under new head coach John Andrzejek. 

Kosmalski told CoBL that he’d been thinking about what was next in his career for some time, that several Division I head coaching opportunities didn’t pan out. He hadn’t received many offers like the one from Andrezejek, he said, but it was one he couldn’t turn down.

“I told our team, I said ‘I know how good it is for my family and how good it is here at the school, in all aspects, and especially with you guys,’” he said. “I wish that I was just content with that, but there’s just something about me that’s been pushing me to do something different and I’ve felt that for a few years now. It’s kind of like, I’ve just got to listen to that. I can’t really fight who I am. 

“I think a lot of people would have been like, ‘I’ll be here 30 years and live the greatest life ever,’ because that’s what my life has been the last 13 years, but it was just, I needed to try this.”

There’s no doubt Kosmalski’s influence on the Philadelphia-area small-college hoops scene during his 13 years in Delaware County was significant. The Dallas native, who played his college ball at Davidson College, where he later worked as an assistant, came to Swarthmore in 2012 to take over a program that for generations had only been an afterthought in the Centennial Conference. 

After three seasons of a slow buildup, the Garnet broke through in 2015-16, winning 22 games finishing as the runner-ups in the Centennial, earning Kosmalski his first of four conference Coach of the Year honors. The follow-up to that season was the program’s first of seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances — the first seven in school history — including four Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights, two Final Fours and a national runner-up finish in 2018-19, when the Garnet peaked with a 29-4 season; they might have topped that the following year, as they were 28-1 and in the Sweet 16 when COVID shut the world down.

In Kosmalski’s last season, Swarthmore went 17-9 (9-4 Centennial), finishing in fifth place in the league and failing to make a non-league postseason tournament for the first time since 2015. He finishes his time there with a career record of 241-102 (.703), including a 147-69 mark in league play (.680).

“I feel really really grateful that I was part of the beginning of it and how long it continued, and I trust in the program to continue with the foundation that he started,” said Yonda, now a high school principal at a Brooklyn charter school. “I’m super-excited for him and his family, I think he’s obviously an unbelievable coach and anywhere he goes is going to be a huge win for that program and I’m excited to see what he can do back in Division I.”

Zac O’Dell, who arrived two years after Yonda from Schenectady (N.Y.) and ended up a two-time All-American, was nothing but happy for his former coach.

“I think he brought a great community together,” O’Dell said. “He brought together a bunch of individuals into a great community to try to do something special. After 13 years, he’s accomplished a lot at a school where that just didn’t happen. But I think he would prefer more, rather than the records and stuff, if you talked about the people as his legacy and the teams and the people he brought together on those teams.”

“I always wanted to see him try to make the jump to D-I at some point,” the 6-7 forward added. “I didn’t think he would stick at Swarthmore forever. I’m super-excited for him, I’m going to be a huge Campbell fan, I don’t know much about the school or the basketball team, been looking them up since Landry got announced [...] super-excited to see what he can do at the Division I level.”

The Swarthmore alumni won’t have to travel far to see their former coach. Campbell plays in the Coastal Athletic Association, the same league as Drexel, meaning the Camels will visit the Daskalakis Athletic Center most years, with schools like Towson and Monmouth not far away. 

Still, some are sure to go down to Buies Creek (N.C.), a town of about 3,000 almost dead center in North Carolina, 45 minutes south of Raleigh and about a two-and-a-half hour drive east of Davidson, which is just north of Charlotte. Getting back closer to home and to some warmer weather appealed to Kosmalski and his wife, he said, but the main draw was the man he’ll be working for.

Andrzejek, who graduated from Columbia in 2014 after completing his undergraduate degree in two-and-a-half years, has been on the staffs at Columbia, San Francisco, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, Washington State and most recently Florida, where he’s spent the last two years under Todd Golden. With Florida currently a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Andrzejek won’t officially take over at Campbell until the Gators’ March Madness run is over, but he’s clearly already putting the pieces of his staff together.

Kosmalski said he first met Andrzejek during his Columbia years, getting to know him better during his time at Johns Hopkins. As Andrzejek worked his way through the Division I ranks, he acquired a certain skill set that Kosmalski didn’t have in the new era of collegiate basketball; Kosmalski, who did things his own way at Swarthmore to great success, didn’t have to worry about NIL and related matters at a school where his players were equally focused on getting published in scientific journals as they were in winning games. 

“He’s incredibly sharp, a very hard worker,” Kosmalski said. “When he was a manager, he was just grinding all the time. He’s one of those guys, he’s a grinder. And then he’s really smart [...] he’s always been really complimentary of what we do, preparing for us and playing against us, he just knows, he’s appreciated the way we’ve coached our guys.

“As he’s gone around, we’ve kept up, and sometimes before this year we’d talk about certain things, basketball-related. When he was feeling he had a chance for the job, he just called and kind of felt me out, and to me it was just really appealing because, again, he is so bright and I think Florida is doing it as well as anyone right now, in terms of how to take advantage of the portal and NIL. So just being able to learn that, which is not an experience I have, from him, who I think is very good at it, just seemed like a really good opportunity. 

“He learns at such a rapid pace, he’s got so much knowledge at a young age, and he’s good at a lot of different things. He’s really been humble about how I can help him, but I’ve been likewise ‘Hey, I think there’s a lot I can learn from you.’ I think we’re both mutually thinking it would be a really good fit.”

Swarthmore has a clear option for succession if the school’s administration wants to stay the course. Kosmalski’s associate head coach, Shane Loeffler, is a 2016 Swarthmore graduate who spent one year as an assistant coach at Randolph College (Va.) before returning to his alma mater, spending the last eight years moving up the Garnet bench. 

Kosmalski wasn’t shy about who he’d like to see get the job. 

“I think Shane’s got a really good chance,” he said. “He’s definitely ready, he’s been there 12 of the last 13 years, four as a player and now eight as an assistant, associate head coach. And I even knew four years ago, I’ve got to get him a job, he’s thinking like a head coach already. 

“The biggest thing is he just loves the place; he’s just so passionate about Swarthmore as an alum and our guys obviously love Shane. He’s been amazing and I think they would all love to see him have the opportunity.”