Fresh start for W&J basketball
They celebrated the old and the new about Washington & Jefferson basketball Tuesday night.
The new was the freshly dedicated Salvitti Family Gymnasium inside Henry Memorial Center. If you haven’t been to W&J’s gymnasium recently, you won’t recognize the place after it received a major renovation.
The old was the men’s basketball roster. This is the oldest and most experienced team fifth-year Presidents head coach Ethan Stewart-Smith has put on the court and that familiarity and seasoning has paid off in two wins to start the season.
The battle-tested W&J men held off Pitt-Greensburg 74-67 in the opening game of a men-women doubleheader. In the nightcap, the Presidents rallied and won a women’s game over Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference preseason favorite La Roche, 61-57.
“These first two games, we’ve had some bend-or-break moments. It has been a long road to get to this point, and we’ve broken in some of those situations in the past. We’ve learned some tough lessons but having more continuity is refreshing,” said Stewart-Smith, who did not play a freshman in a home game for the first time in his tenure.
The W&J men won their opening game last Friday night, 66-64 at Franciscan, when Zach Queen made a game-winning three-pointer with six seconds remaining.
The bend-or-break moment against Pitt-Greensburg came midway through the second half with the score tied 50-50. That’s when W&J’s reserve forward Alexander Skowran grabbed a loose ball off the floor and put it in to give the Presidents (2-0) a lead they would not relinquish.
W&J senior point guard Jonathan DeVito then stole the basketball on consecutive UPG possessions, converting one steal into a free throw and the other into a layup that made it 55-50.
DeVito and super sub Nicholas Campalong led W&J in scoring, each with 15 points. Primo Zini followed with 13. Skowran had nine points and, along with Okikiola Agbale, played some strong defense in the second half against UPG’s taller and bulkier post players.
“What seniors do is they steady you,” Stewart-Smith said about DeVito. “He and I are on the same page right now.
“We couldn’t have won the game without Skowran. What he did in the second half won the game for us. He and (Agbale) got the job done on defense in the in the post against guys who killed us in the first half.”
W&J sophomore Primo Zini scored nine of his 13 points in the second half, including seven points in the final four minutes.
“These first two games show the growth we’ve made,” Stewart-Smith said. “These two games were against opponents that we lost to last year and returned most of their starters, like us.
“We had a lot of guys step up and make plays down the stretch. It’s nice to be able to rely on that experience.”
Jojo France led UPG (0-1) with 18 points. Matt Johnson had 15 points and Torian Jenkins came off the bench to score 13.
For the W&J women, it was a story of both new and old in the Presidents’ season-opener. The new against La Roche was Maddie Gutierrez, a freshman out of South Fayette and the daughter of former W&J men’s coach Glenn Gutierrez. Maddie Gutierrez scored 14 points and made two old-fashioned three-point plays in the fourth quarter that helped W&J overcame a 13-point second-half deficit. The second three-point play gave W&J the lead for good at 54-52 with 4:08 remaining.
The game wasn’t decided until La Roche, trailing by three, missed a desperation three-pointer from the left wing with less than five seconds to play. The ball was rebounded by Gutierrez, who converted an ensuing free throw.
The older portion of the victory was junior forward Allie Seto, who scored 14 of her 22 points in the second half and was a force under the basket, grabbing 22 rebounds. Seto and Gutierrez were the only Presidents to score in double figures.
Shaundrea Butler led La Roche (0-1) with 17 points. She left the game in the third quarter with a calf injury and the Redhawks leading by 10 points. Butler returned in the fourth quarter, which started with La Roche leading 44-42. With Butler, La Roche pushed the lead up to 48-42 with 8:24 to play, but she exited for good at that point and did not return. Without her, the Redhawks didn’t have enough offense to match the Presidents.