City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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SWARTHMORE, Pa. -- The first few years of Landry Kosmalski’s reign at Swarthmore were about small steps.

He took over a program that won three games in 2011-12, then won seven his first year, then eight, and finally an 11-win season in 2014-15.

So far, 2015-16 represents a giant leap.

A 71-62 win over a Gettysburg squad on Thursday night at Tarble Pavilion pushed the Garnet’s record to 10-1 overall, the best mark through 11 games since the 1939-40 season.

“I think it’s kind of just been little steps the whole way,” said sophomore guard Zack Yonda, one of a few players who’ve been key in Swarthmore’s sudden hoops resurgence. “We’re all just a year older, we didn’t really lose anyone, we all have a lot of experience; our young guys are playing but they have a lot of experience, and it’s all just adding up.”

Picked just seventh in the Centennial Conference’s preseason poll, Swarthmore had played like one of the top teams in the high-academic Division III conference early on, winning its first nine games of the season before losing to Del-Val on Jan. 3. Going up against the Bullets, who like the Garnet had won their first three games in league play, was another hurdle towards providing they were a legitimate threat.

Consider it another test passed.

Matt Brennan, a Connecticut native--Swarthmore’s players hail from 11 different states plus the Czech Republic--finished with a career-high 26 points to lead the way, hitting 7-of-9 from 3-point range and knocking down four clutch foul shots in the final minute to help seal the win.

“It was a good game, got a lot of open looks...I was just shooting it, guys were getting me the ball,” the 6-foot-tall sophomore said. “Ever since the day I got here, Landry’s had us going, keeping that right mindset that we can contend with everybody.”

Belief in one’s self and team is a key part of being a successful athlete at any level, but that’s a mindset that’s been difficult to come by in Swarthmore history.

With few exceptions, it’s been a largely-unremarkable 114 years of Swarthmore men’s basketball, whose last conference title of any kind was in 1990-91; that group fell to Johns Hopkins in the league championship game.

But Kosmalski, who both played and coached at Davidson under longtime head coach Bob McKillop, has his team acting like they expect to be here, like playing front-runner in the Centennial is something that was bound to happen, not just hoped for.

“Absolutely we should be playing with confidence right now,” said Yonda, a 6-1 Conestoga (Pa.) grad who added 16 points in the win. “I think in years past, we’ve gone into some of these games expecting to play from behind...I think towards the end of last year, (and) especially this year, we have the mentality that we belong out there as much as anyone.”

This turnaround didn’t come out of nowhere. Kosmalski had been giving his young players a lot of freedom and playing time over his first three years.

Along with Yonda (15.4 ppg), 6-8 center sophomore Robbie Walsh (9.1 ppg, 7.8 rpg) started 20-plus games a year ago. Junior Chris Bourne (14.9 ppg, 6.9 rpg) is a three-year starter, while junior wing Sam Lebryk (5.3 ppg) started 18 games a year ago and 14 as a freshman.

The sophomores--Yonda, Walsh and Brennan (11.4 ppg), along with reserves Andrew Kauffman (3.5 ppg) and Jim Lammers (3.0 ppg)--make up a five-man class that Kosmalski will be leaning on heavily for seasons to come.

“They’re fully committed and their attitude spreads to the other guys, even though they’re sophomores,” Kosmalski said. “We got lucky in that we recruited the right guys because it’s not something we’ve taught them, they just had it when they got here.”

It helps that Kosmalski has an incredibly bright group to work with.

Swarthmore is third in the Liberal Arts category in the latest rankings by U.S. News & World Report, behind only Williams and Amherst. The average accepted high school student--and only 14 percent of applicants are admitted--has around a 2160 on the SAT.

In other words, what the Garnet are doing on the court is secondary to what goes on in the academic buildings on the Delaware County school’s 425-acre campus.

“We joke about how we beat teams, and it’s like you just got beat by a bunch of nerds,” Yonda said. “We take pride in it, what we do up there (in class) is really challenging, and to come down here and just put everything we got in that gym, it’s hard to do.”

Before classes resume next week and the double duty begins again for the Garnet, one more test looms on the horizon.

The final matchup of break comes against Franklin & Marshall (9-2, 4-0), the preseason league favorite and now the only other team still undefeated in league play. The Diplomats, ranked No. 17 in the country by D3Hoops.com, are led by All-American candidate Brandon Federici.

To Swarthmore, it'll just be the next game up.

“Coming off a win, no matter how big it is, try to win the next game,” Yonda said. “10-1 is awesome, we’re all pretty fired up about that--we’ve got to win the next game.”