2021/22 Swarthmore College Men’s Basketball Season

Neumann College - Wednesday November 17th

Swarthmore College Garnet’s George Cozine (#54) vies for the ball against Neumann University Knights KJ Speller (#21) during a game played on Wednesday night, November 17, at the Tarble Pavilion on the Swarthmore College campus. Photo: Earl Kufen

Swarthmore College’s Coach Landry Kosmalski seems tickled pink that the 20-month COVID-19 hiatus is over, and he can get back to coaching men’s basketball again. He said recently that, when he was walking towards his office and saw the team’s practice routine taped to the wall, it really hit him that normalcy has now somewhat returned. 

The college’s men’s basketball team, currently ranked number eight, played their home opener last Wednesday night in a non-conference game against Neumann College—in front of a full student section, all masked up and ready to cheer on one of the best teams in NCAA Division 3.

After nearly 600 days away from the court, the team looked loose and ready to pick up where they left off. Before their hiatus, they had been on a playoff run with strong expectations of competing for a national championship in 2019. And then everything went poof! The college thought about continuing the playoffs in front of no fans, but then the whole thing was shut down. 

The Swarthmore team won the first two games of their 2021/22 campaign at the Scranton Invitational on Friday and Saturday. That means their next game, against Neumann College, was their third game in six days. Coach Landry recognized his players’ fatigue last night, and attributed it partly to the packed schedule, and partly to an aggressive practice routine. He rotated ten players in and out of the Neumann game to maximize performance.

If you’ve often seen the team play, you’ve come to expect a style that features a lot of control, well-executed plays, pressure defense, plenty of passing, and very little dribbling. They take their share of three-point shots and rarely miss a foul shot. They battle hard for every rebound and have no problem dispelling the belief that basketball is a non-contact sport. 

Last Wednesday night, playing against Neumann, the Swarthmore team jumped out to a quick 10-point lead before falling behind at about the 12-minute mark as Neumann made a strong comeback. Then, just before the end of the first half, the Swarthmore team went on a run and got the score up to 41-33 before heading to the locker room.

In the second half, in typical Swarthmore fashion, the Garnet simply wore Neumann down. Swat’s starters sat out much of the second half watching their second team build a 16-point lead. When the starters were rotated back in at the nine-minute mark, they never let the score gap get smaller than 10 points, and closed out with a 17-point victory. 

This year’s Swarthmore team has a couple of freshmen who show great promise: Matt Mulvey (#11) is a pure shooter, and Aiden Godfrey (#4), at 6’8”, proved he knows how to score from within the lines near the basket. Those are two players to keep an eye on; they’ll probably see a lot of playing time this year. 

Chester fans got a special treat: they got to watch Chester native Kyson Rawls lead Neumann with 16 points. (Kyson is the son of Kyle Rawls of Foster Funeral Home). And then, over the public address system, fans heard a happy-birthday shout-out to another guy with Chester ties, Tobin Adams, Jr., Swarthmore’s Assistant Director of Athletics. 

Expect to read more coverage of Swarthmore men’s basketball this season in The Swarthmorean. I’ll not only be bringing you game results, but also profiles of the coaches and players as they flex their Top-10 national ranking throughout the season. 

Come join me for the ride.

Widener University - Saturday, November 20th

Swarthmore player George Visconti draining 2 of his 20 points. Photo: Stefan Roots

Bam! Did you feel that? It was the first bump on the Garnet’s ride.

Someone must have forgotten to tell Widener about Swarthmore’s gaudy win percentage on its home turf, because Widener’s team, The Pride, knocked any semblance of pride out of Swarthmore’s Top-10 ranking Saturday afternoon with a decisive win over the Garnet, 77-66.

Widener won the game’s opening tip and, seconds later, scored on an easy layup to set the stage for a dominating performance that exposed Swarthmore’s every weakness in this non-conference, early-season rivalry. 

All rivalries need a sexy name, so I’m going to call the Widener-Swarthmore rivalry the “SEPTA-109 Contest”: the two schools are a 10-minute ride from each other on the SEPTA 109 bus line, which has stops adjacent to each campus along Chester Road. On Saturday, Widener was clearly driving the bus, while Swarthmore’s squad looked like they’d missed a few stops. 

Even though Swarthmore was the overwhelming favorite going into the contest, Widener has historically had the upper hand. They’ve won eight of the teams’ last 10 meetings, and in the two programs’ 102-year history with each other, Widener has scored 68 wins to Swarthmore’s 20.

The first half of Saturday’s contest was typical Swarthmore-style play, with each team making some little runs—and the first half ended with the Garnet trailing by only three points. But Widener dominated the second half, punctuating it with a 19-9 run and taking a 14-point lead with a little over a minute to go. Swarthmore wasn’t able to get off good shots in the final stretch that might have cut into that lead. 

Coach Kosmalski trying to get results. Photo: Stefan Roots

After the game, Swarthmore’s Coach Kosmalski, said that the loss should serve as a wake-up call to his players. The aspect of the game that seemed to bother him most was Widener’s seeming ability to score at will whenever they were under the basket: Swarthmore was outscored 34-8 on those shots. Widener’s backcourt consistently found open men under the basket for easy layups, which contributed to a lot of high-percentage shots for The Pride. Coach Kosmalski hinted that the Swarthmore team will be waking up early on Sunday to review some film. Let’s put the Swarthmore fire department on notice: this film session will probably be combustible. 

Another aspect of the game that contributed to Widener’s win was that, on offense, Swarthmore could rarely run through their entire sets before defensive pressure forced bad shots, resulting in a shooting percentage of only 32% from the field and 29% from three. Widener, in contrast, shot most of their shots from point-blank range under the basket and racked up an impressive 50% from the field. They made only four three-pointers and were a measly 19 for 31 from the foul line, but their work down low was more than enough to make up the difference. 

Swarthmore’s George Visconti put up 20 points on 8-14 shooting, but points were hard to come by elsewhere. The Garnet will always have a tough time scoring if Vinny DeAngelo is held to only five shots (credit for which goes to Widener’s defense)—and if Matt Mulvey goes 0-8. Widener, on the other hand, landed five players in double-digit scoring, and seemed to take advantage of every loose-ball opportunity.

Widener had all the answers on Saturday, and Swarthmore simply could not get any traction in the second half. So it’ll be back to the drawing board for the Garnet as they prepare for league play on Tuesday, November 23rd, against Muhlenberg College in Allentown. Let’s see how fast they can turn things back around.