City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
—

(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2025-26 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

~~~

After several seasons of lurking in the shadows, the Haverford School is ready to get back into the spotlight. 

The Fords won the Inter-Ac and PAISAA state championship with an unbeaten 2018-19 season behind the likes of Christian Ray and Jameer Nelson Jr. But head coach Bernie Rogers had to start anew coming out of the pandemic, his program finishing at the basement of the six-team private school league in 2021-22. 

It’s been a steady climb since then, with one of the area’s top prospects leading the way. Now, coming off a 22-5 (6-4 Inter-Ac season), with a veteran core in place and a deep group of sophomores ready to join them at the varsity level, the Fords are hoping to push for the top once again.

“I think we’re going to be really good again this year, just need to piece some things together,” junior guard Silas Graham told CoBL. “I feel like we should win [the Inter-Ac] this year.”

Penn Charter has been the dominant force in the Inter-Ac of late, winning the last two titles outright after sharing it with Malvern Prep the two seasons before that. But the Quakers’ dominant 2025 class is now at their respective colleges, and while they have some exciting youth, there’s no longer a clear league juggernaut entering the season. Malvern Prep, Springside-Chestnut Hill and Episcopal Academy are all going to come into the season with championship hopes; only Germantown Academy, under first-year head coach John Cox, will have some work to do to prove it’s in the mix.

“(Assistant coach Keith) Czarny says it a lot, it’s so competitive in our league that one possession could determine us being in first place or us being in last place,” Graham said. And he would know.

The 6-foot-4 point guard has been one of the league’s top youngsters since he first burst onto the scene as an eighth grader. A fourth-year starter and Division I recruit with mid-major offers and high-major interest, Graham’s firmly established himself as a true centerpiece player, capable of making plays with or without the ball in his hands and stuffing the stat sheet with regularity; as a sophomore, he averaged 16 points, seven rebounds, three assists and three steals per contest. 

Now that he’s finally an upperclassman, he’s got to be more than just a talented youngster on the court. He’s got to set the tone off it as well.

“I just think [I have to be] bringing energy all the time, no matter if I’m having a bad day in school or something else is going on outside,” he said. “Just having the same energy every day, building some consistency every day with the younger guys just helps us grow as a team, grow as people.”

Graham is one of three returning starters along with Manny Butts, a 6-7 forward, and Dillon Gamble, a 6-2 guard, both seniors. Junior wing Connor Morsell, a junior guard, is the only other returning member of the varsity rotation.

While Graham is the no-doubt star, Rogers and the Fords are hoping for a big season from Butts. The versatile post missed his entire sophomore season with a torn ACL and returned for his junior year, but he wasn’t all the way back physically. He shed the knee brace this summer and looks like he’s gotten his bounce back. 

“Throughout the whole offseason I’ve just been working on my body, especially my lower body,” he said, “so I’ve been able to become a more explosive player and all-around [feel] way better than I did last year.”

To bolster the corps, Rogers brought in good size in 6-4 wing Franklin Gilbert, who transferred from La Salle and is repeating his junior year, and 6-5 forward Walter Plimpton, a sophomore who came over from Lawrenceville Prep (N.J.). 

Plimpton joins a deep 2028 class that also includes guards Roman Pena (5-11) and Chaz Rodriguez (5-10) and forwards Owen Murphy (6-5) and Cole Maguire (6-9). That group should help offset the graduations of twins Leo and Jacob Becker (Washington College), Duke Cloran (Scranton) and KJ Carson (Susquehanna). 

There likely won’t be room for all of them in the varsity rotation in every game, but the Fords need them to contribute if they want to win the Inter-Ac title. 

“I think all of them can help this year, it just depends on who we’re playing and what we need in a certain game,” Graham said. “If we need to go more physical, Owen and Walt are going to help a lot. If we need someone who’s going to help dribble and pass, Roman and Chaz can come in and do that stuff.”

Butts said he was encouraged by what he saw from the sophomores over the summer; after some growing pains in spring leagues, they stepped up during the June scholastic live period events at Executive Education. Butts recalled one specific game at the end of the second period, in a game against New York powerhouse Darrow School, where the Fords were missing a few of their stars for various reasons, forcing the youngsters into big minutes.

“We lost by a hefty amount,” he said, “but just seeing how they handled the adversity and not backing down from the challenge showed a lot of maturity for me. Building off of that and how we’ve been playing in the (fall), I’ve seen a lot of aggression coming from them, so they’re going to be ready.”

The Fords will have plenty more time to prepare for the Inter-Ac slate, with 14 games on the schedule before the league opener against SCH Academy on Friday, Jan. 9. They’ve got some good ones, including a pair of games at Penn Charter for the Speedy Morris Classic (Dec. 12-13), a visit from South River (Md.), a couple games at the Governor’s Challenge in Maryland, and more. 

It likely won’t be until the regular-season finale, Feb. 13 against Episcopal Academy, that the Fords will know if their Inter-Ac charge has been successful. 

“Don’t sleep on us,” Butts said. “I feel like we’re not as talked about as we should be, but that’ll come.”