City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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In the span of one spring, Latief Lorenzano-White’s recruiting went, in the words of Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, from 0 to 11. 

Well, actually, to 13. 

The Imhotep Charter senior became one of the area’s hottest recruits this offseason, picking up a baker’s dozen Division I offers in the course of just a few weeks. After narrowing his list to a group of favorites, he decided that staying close to home and playing in front of friends and family was a key factor and committed to Drexel, announcing his decision to play for Zach Spiker’s program on social media earlier this month. 

“I feel like it’s going to be the best choice for me,” he told CoBL in a phone call Friday night. “Get to stay home, my family members get to see me play, [and] I felt like this was going to be the best opportunity for me to play and see the floor early in my college career.”

A bespectacled 6-foot-4, 170-pound wing/guard, Lorenzano-White is the third member of Drexel’s 2026 class along with a pair of 6-5 wings, Sumter (S.C.)’s Bryan Brown and Tre Paulding from Lee’s Summit (Mo.).

He’s just the latest in a long line of Division I prospects to come out of Imhotep, which has become the Public League’s premier hoops program under longtime head coach Andre Noble. He’s also the second Division I recruit in his family, joining older brother Cyrie Coates, a 2018 Overbrook High grad who went from the junior college ranks to play at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in 2020-21.

But his recruiting journey wasn’t one that started early on; instead, it built up like a pressure nozzle that finally erupted this year.

“Sometimes you don’t know when the breakthrough’s going to happen but he had it and he really exploded out there,” Noble said, “and we were just super-happy that a person of his character, that all that worked out for him. He’s a great student, he’s a great kid in the building, and he works really, really hard.”

Lorenzano-White played his freshman year at Bartram, where the young wing was a standout from the get-go on a team that struggled to pick up wins. He moved to Imhotep Charter and jumped into the starting lineup as a sophomore, joining a team that featured seniors Ahmad Nowell (VCU) and Ma’kye Taylor (Albany); that group won a PIAA 5A state title, with Lorenzano-White scoring seven points in the win over Franklin Regional.

He had a bigger impact as a junior on a Panthers squad that went 26-6, captured the Public League championship and made it to the PIAA 6A semifinals. Playing anything from the ‘2’ to the ‘4,’ his length, versatility and hustle made him fit right in on a program that’s been known for developing talent under Noble’s 25-year run with the Panthers.

But he still entered the 2025 offseason without a Division I offer. 

“I thought I was never going to get one,” he told CoBL, “so when I finally got one, it was just a relief — and then it all just started coming in at once. It was just hard to comprehend, it was just a relief. It just felt good.

“It was just all my work that I put in, it showed, that’s really what the feeling [was], like it finally paid off,” he added.

The first one, from North Carolina A&T, came through in late May, after a live period tournament with Philly Pride on the Under Armour circuit. The flurry that followed between then and then end of July included more programs from the CAA plus squads in the MACC, Northeast, and Patriot Leagues. 

Lorenzano-White narrowed the group down to five: Drexel, NC A&T, NJIT, Loyola (Md.) and Towson. Official visits followed to each of that group; he saw Drexel in late August, but it wasn’t until he took his final visit to NC A&T at the end of September that he knew Drexel was the perfect fit. 

At 34th and Market, he’ll be joining the program in advance of what should be Spiker’s 11th season as the Dragons’ head coach. He’s gone 131-145 (.475) in his first nine seasons, though that mark is significantly better (82-64, .561) over the last five years. They’ve gone to March Madness once in that span, winning the Colonial (now Coastal) Athletic Association title in 2021, their first league championship since winning the North Atlantic Conference (now America East) tournament in 1996.

Though the transfer portal means any program’s roster is liable to have significant turnover from one year to the next, Lorenzano-White is slated to be teammates next year with several locals, including La Salle’s Horace Simmons Jr., Wood’s Josh Reed and former Carroll guard Moses Hipps, who spent his last two years of high school in Georgia. 

The 2025-26 Dragons get their season underway on Nov. 3 with a game against Widener. Expect to see Lorenzano-White in the stands with regularity.

“I’m going to try to go to as many as I can catch,” he said.