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No horse-and-buggy show when Mennonite Madness hits TBT

06/18/2015, 2:45pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Let’s get one thing straight--Mennonites are not Amish.

They don’t ride horses & buggies, they don’t abstain from electricity.

So don’t expect Mennonite Madness to take the court at The Basketball Tournament sporting long beards and suspenders.

Although…

“We thought about that, but I don’t think we’re going to go quite that far,” Tyler Warfel, the general manager of the almost-all-Mennonite squad, said with a laugh. “But we did consider it.”

They’re certainly not offended by the assumption. Their original logo featured a basketball, atop of which sat the horse & buggy that’s become affiliated with Lancaster County and the Amish that live there.

That is, however, where a good portion of the team went to school at Lancaster Bible College, though many originate from a Mennonite community in the middle of Delaware.

That’s where Tyler and his younger brother Madison hail from, and where Tyler is the current head coach at their alma mater, Greenwood Mennonite, with fellow team members Derek Scott and Aaron Sterling serving as his assistants. Also graduating from Greenwood Mennonite were Jason Swartzentruber, Timothy Yoder and Jeremy Yoder, all of whom played there between 2004-2009. The only odd man out, age-wise, is Sterling, who graduated from the school in 1997.

All basketball players, all Mennonites.

Well, except for one.

“Growing up, I just thought Mennonites were who you see riding the horse and buggy out in Lancaster County,” admitted Jason O’Connell, a Bucks County native and the lone non-Mennonite member of the team; he met the majority of his teammates at LBC. “I found out they’re definitely not.”

No, they're just regular guys--certainly religious, but that's neither here nor there. They have normal jobs in the normal world and do normal things.

Like play basketball.

Mennonite Madness is one of the 97 teams qualified for the second edition of TBT, which burst onto the scene last year with promises of quality basketball and $500,000 payout to the winners.

And it delivered, getting the finals aired on ESPN3 and generating enough momentum to expand from 32 teams to the 97 who will hit the courts at four regional locations in July.

They’re all vying for a prize that has expanded to $1 million, and the field is loaded with former college stars and quite a few former NBA players as well.

But there are plenty of underdogs, and Mennonite Madness certainly fits that mold.

None of them stand taller than six feet, which could be an issue when they play a team like Eberlein Drive, with its two seven-footers and 6-8 NBA pro Renaldo Balkman; or Armored Athlete, with seven players standing 6-7 and taller.

So perhaps their planned offensive strategy isn’t too surprising.

“We’re just going to bomb up 3-pointers,” Tyler Warfel said. “Derek Scott in particular, he’s got unlimited range and he’ll just bomb them up from anywhere. So we’re hoping that he can catch fire early and we can maybe surprise somebody just by shooting a bunch of threes.”

“Honestly, we’re probably going to bring a lot of excitement just because we will be the run-and-gun team--we won’t be setting up a lot of offense, I don’t think,” said Scott, who added that his personal best is 54 points, including 13 3-pointers, in a rec league. “It’ll be first pass, shoot, if you get a good look, go for it. I would describe us like the Warriors’ offense a little bit, fast-break threes, stuff like that...I’m definitely Steph (Curry).”

Of the 97 teams entered, there won’t be many with longer odds to make it to New York and play for the million dollars on August 2, in a game that will be broadcast on ESPN.

Not that they’re expecting to--on their official team page, they all have a listed salary of a single dollar.

“Really for us, it’s more just about the experience of having fun, playing together again in a competitive setting,” Warfel said. “Because, I mean, we’ve played in some church leagues here and there, but haven’t really played in a real competitive setting since we played together in high school.”

Back at Greenwood Mennonite, where Tyler Warfel now serves as head boys’ basketball coach, the group experienced quite a bit of success. From 2006-08, when Scott and Madison Warfel were seniors, they went 50-6, going undefeated in Peninsula Athletic Christian Conference (PACC) play in each of those three years.

Despite its humble background, Mennonite Madness managed to drum up over 300 “fans” on TBT’s website, which put them in the top 10 in the Midwest region (despite their Pa./Del. background, the team felt it had a better chance of qualifying in the Chicago regional). They were helped out early on by a Tweet from Elena Delle Donne of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky, a Delaware native.

That was good enough to get them in the regional field of 24 teams in Chicago, where they'll make the road trip out for the July 17 opening round.

“That’s pretty much all we talk about right now,” Scott said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m definitely just excited to get out there and just play. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to get to play against ex-NBA players, meet them, stuff like that. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

And one final bonus--the tournament helps fulfill an old college promise.

“They would joke around that they were going to get me to become a Mennonite by the time we were done school,” O’Connell said.

In a way, they certainly have--though it took a little longer past college.
If things go really well in Chicago, maybe they can convert some fans, too.