Feb 24, 2022 4 min read

It was a good night to be a Washington & Jefferson President.

W&J’s women’s basketball team beat Bethany to move on to its third straight Presidents’ Athletic Conference championship game, and hours later, the men’s team beat Waynesburg and is now 40 minutes of basketball away from its first conference championship since 1995.

“All this is is a reward for the work that these guys have put in,” W&J coach Ethan Stewart-Smith said.

It took a lot of work not just this season, but over the past several years for W&J.

In 2015-16, the Presidents were 1-25.

Now, W&J is on the precipice of being sworn in as the proverbial Commander in Chief of PAC men’s basketball.

“I think they’re the best team in the league,” Waynesburg coach Tim Fusina said.

W&J got off to a slow start, falling behind 5-0, but outscored Waynesburg 38-22 in the rest of the first half to go into halftime up by 11. Nick Gearhart (14 points) and J.R. Mazza (11) made up most of W&J’s scoring, and on the other side, Waynesburg’s Jake Scheidt had 13 points in the first half, setting a career-high in just 20 minutes. He finished the night with a team-high 19 points.

In the second half, Waynesburg hung around, even grabbing the lead at one point, but never could catch up to the Presidents and fell to its I-79 rival for the third time this season.

Mazza led the Presidents with 21 points, and Gearhart wasn’t far behind with 19. Michael Bigley chipped in 10 for W&J. For Waynesburg, Nijon Kirkman had 13 points and 10 rebounds in his last college game. Jansen Knotts and John Tastinger added 11 each to go with Scheidt’s 19

Despite the sour ending, Waynesburg made strides this winter, winning a PAC tournament game for the first time since 2015 and winning one on the road for the first time since 2006.

Kirkman, Zach Ford and Steven Eng are set to depart and Popeck’s status is uncertain- the 2017 Wash High graduate has a year of eligibility remaining.

Everybody else is projected to be back at Waynesburg for year four of the Fusina era

“It’s also going to be a huge spring and summer for guys like Ryan Felberg, Bryson Wilt, Jansen Knotts, Jake Scheidt, Antone Baker, all of those guys to improve. So it’s an important time for us right now, but I’m very pleased with where we are as a program.”

On the women’s side, W&J dominated in the first half, and held on for a 55-47 win over Bethany to advance to its third straight PAC championship game. The Presidents led the Bison 31-15 at the half- outscoring them 17-2 in the second quarter- and held off a late charge to survive at home.

For coach Jina DeRubbo, the team that came out firing in the first half will need to be the one that shows up Saturday at 4:30 against Westminster.

“If you look at the game tonight, the first half, we came out like we wanted to win a championship. And then, the second half, we came out like we were scared we might not win a championship. So, those are two very different feelings of how you play, and we have to make sure that we find a way to come out like we’re supposed to win a championship like we did in the first half.

Piper Morningstar led the Presidents with 13 points- going 7-8 from the foul line- and Sarah Berardelli added an even 10. Bethany’s Courtney Walker led all scorers with 19 points.

Despite losing four starters from last year’s squad, the Presidents are back where they’d hoped to be.

“If you’d asked me at the beginning of the year ‘would we be here?’, you know, graduating the four kids that we did, I would have said you were crazy,” DeRubbo said. “So, I just think it’s all about how hard they play, how much they play together and they’ve just gotten better and better all year long.”

The W&J men will take on Chatham Saturday at 7:30, with the women’s game proceeding it. Both title games will be in Washington.