City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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There were two minutes left in the game, Plymouth-Whitemarsh led by more than 30 points, and the starters were all on the bench.

And they were still running an intimidating full court press.

“Since I’ve been here, we’re a 90-foot team, we’ve always been a 90-foot team,” said Plymouth-Whitemarsh head coach Jim Donofrio. “One of the keys we like to do, is if we’re not on tonight, we’re at least going to try to wear you down. A lot of times that happens. When you play uptempo like that, even when you back off and take the traps off you have an energy about you.”

In their second league game out of the Suburban One American division, the Colonials (4-0) used that vaunted press to roll to an 87-56 win over Upper Merion (0-2) to stay undefeated on the young season.

The press, which has been a long-time staple for Donofrio’s Colonials, was in full force against the Vikings, who were forced into 21 turnovers.

“It gets you so many easy baskets,” he said. “It allows you to make some defensive mistakes, maybe not move the ball so well on offense, but I’m going to guess minimum, almost fifty-percent of our baskets are off of transition, and that’s going to translate into thirty or forty points. That’s the difference of a game. We play that way, we think that way, it’s got to be an attitude, it can’t be score and celebrate, we don’t score and backpedal, we score to reward yourself to play defense, and that’s the mindset that you’ve got to cultivate. When they don’t, we’ve got guys on the bench who are hungry to show that they can.”

Despite the all-out pressure being a common sight from P-W teams, this year’s team adds a new wrinkle to the well-known system, adding extra depth, whereas the Colonials have usually played a rotation of six seven players in past years.

“Right now, we’re an uptempo team, we’re very balanced in terms of depth, you could see there’s not a lot of separation sometimes, so we can experiment with lineups to stay hot,” said Donofrio. “That puts a little bit of pressure on some of the players sometimes, they’ve got a little less time to get warmed up, we’re going to do some things and find combos. We also want to do things a little different, we play nine to eleven guys, and so far we’ve done it almost every game. At the same time, there’s going to be a core five we have to find for the night.”

“This year it takes it to another level, we’ve done this in past years with six or seven guys,” he added.

For a team who, according to its head coach, hasn’t exactly found their core starting five yet with such a deep roster, one of the area’s most prolific players, Rider commit Xzavier Malone has been the consistent key for Plymouth-Whitemarsh.

He led all scorers Tuesday night with 22 points, 13 of those coming in the second quarter, which was when the Colonials built a 16-8 first quarter lead into 42-21 at the half and turned off the lights on Upper Merion.

“You’ll notice, he’s not coming out of the game a whole lot,” said Donofrio. “He’s one of the top guys in the Philadelphia area, and what he did right there is he just hits another gear, and that gear is what stops teams from being able to trap you or set anything up, that’s what the best teams do and we do that.”

Seven second-quarter points by Ahmad Williams--which would be his only ones on the night--were also a key factor in the Colonials’ quickly running away in the second frame alongside Malone’s impressive period.  

While Malone’s contributions are the most obvious for P-W, several other players in the ten-man mix had themselves solid nights against Upper Merion, with seven guys dropping in at least five points. Senior Mike Lotito chipped in 11 points, while seniors Davon Burrell and Oakley Spencer combined for 17.

Another senior, Grady Minick, who dropped 12 of his own with two threes in the second half, is one of Malone’s favorite “go-to guys,” according to Donofrio.

Minick lost his whole sophomore year to injury, lost a lot of playing time as a junior as a result, and is still catching his way back up into the developing core of the talented Colonials roster.

“He’s a little bit behind in reps, he really has the experience of a junior, so we’re trying to catch him up but he really does some great things in practice,” said Donofrio. “You’ve got to give a kid the opportunity to have all the lightbulbs go on, to play in front of the crowd and not put so much pressure on him. He sat two years and he’s got a lot he wants to prove to himself and others. Xzavier loves him, he loves finding him.”

He and the rest of the Colonials will certainly have a chance to improve as they continue finding their core this season. Tough tests lie ahead on Plymouth-Whitemarsh’s schedule, but with a deep team like this that can create pressure and set tempo, Donofrio is well aware of the little issue that can bring down even the most dominant of teams.

“We’re a little bit too confident of a group, sometimes we relax too much, but we know what to do. We just try to take each game one at a time, we’ve got a league game next at Wissahickon, so just don’t fall asleep. We have to see Upper Merion over there in a month, don’t fall asleep.”

“Basketball’s a game that can come back and bite you,” he concluded. “One at a time, stay humble.”