Plymouth Whitemarsh gets by Radnor
WHITEMARSH >> It was not as pretty as the final score may make it look, but the Plymouth Whitemarsh boys basketball team survived the first round of the District 1-AAAA playoffs.
The Colonials beat Radnor, 49-36, Friday night at Colonial Elementary.
“I’m not quite sure what to think,” Colonials coach Jim Donofrio said. “I thought we had a great set of practices. All you can do as a team is get as up as you can – get yourself in the right frame of mind. We seem to be the kind of team that really needs to be on edge and humbled. We seem to be a team that isn’t worthy of believing it should win strong, because we lay eggs when we do that. We seem to relax.
“If we really want to do something special this playoff run, with six seniors on the floor and a kid like Ahmin Williams, who acts like a senior, to have that kind of experience, and you’re home and you have 400 of your closest friends supporting you, you can’t be thrilled with that performance because you got out-hustled on the boards, you got beat to balls, you seemed to be playing to style instead of substance. And you still won by double digits. If that continues this is going to end quickly.”
PW led by one, 24-23, with three minutes left in the third quarter before taking control of game and setting up a second-round home date with Academy Park Tuesday.
Part of the reason for the tight game could be an injury to star guard Xzavier Malone. The Rider-bound senior suffered a lower right leg injury with a minute to play in the second quarter and did not return until the final minute of the third quarter.
Malone left with a five-point lead, 19-14, and returned with a four-point lead, 28-24.
On Malone’s first offensive possession back, he found Kevin Ashenfelter wide open for a three to extend the lead to seven and the Red Raiders did not get much closer the rest of the way.
While Malone was out, PW’s defense picked up the slack to maintain the lead. On Radnor’s first five possessions of the third quarter, the Colonials allowed a layup, forced a jump ball, grabbed two turnovers and trapped a Red Raider to force a timeout.
“PW had a lot to do with that,” Radnor coach Chris Monahan said of his offensive struggles. “Everybody knows 1-2-2 press is coming. We didn’t do a good job of handling it. We didn’t attack the way we wanted to attack. At times we did. We wanted to get it, we wanted to get into the middle and we wanted to go. I think too many times we were going east-to-west instead of north-south. Their height bothered us. And that’s what they do, they score off turnovers.
“We’re a three-point shooting team, we shot 2-for-13. We go 6-for-14 from the foul line. We’re not beating the two seed by doing those things.”
Ashenfelter said that stopping the three was a big focus for PW’s defense.
“This team is a real drive-and-kick kind of team,” he said. “We’ve ran into a lot of teams like that. So what we try to do is work on keeping our man in front of us and not get beat … We try to make them make a quick decision where they are either going to shoot an awkward off-balance shot or if they kick it out, that guy that’s playing on the three-shooter is going to be able to get a hand or get a steal.”
Malone finished the game with a game-high 14 points, Mike Lotito added 12 for PW and Ashenfelter 10.
Mason Ressler led the Red Raiders in scoring with 10 points and Alex Hino and Vinnie Kelly each added eight.
Radnor started the game hot, jumping out to an 8-2 lead with Ressler scoring six of the points. PW responded with a 9-2 run to end the quarter with a one-point lead, 11-10.
The Colonials then started the second quarter on an 8-0 run to take a 19-10 lead. Radnor scored the next four points before Malone left with the injury.
The time for PW’s Tuesday matchup with Academy Park has not been confirmed yet.
The loss brings Radnor’s season to a close.
“We were 6-16 last year,” Monahan said. “That’s coming off where we had 14 wins and made the district playoffs for the first time in forever. There has not been a lot of playoff trips. Last year all those guys were juniors and sophomores on that six- win team. We wanted to do more. We never really talked about, ‘we have to win a game in districts.’ We just talked about we want to be good. We have to get better every day.”
