The path to Swarthmore hoops is a path to the Final Four

The path to the basket was as convoluted as his path to the school. Michael Caprise appeared to be a screener, a built-in feature on a play that sent Swarthmore to the NCAA Division III final. The play was new, just recently installed.

Ball being thrown inbounds underneath, Caprise started by the foul line behind a teammate. He rolled right, and he did set a screen, and if it fully took, Swarthmore’s star guard, Vinny DeAngelo, could have been open. The other guys, from Nichols College, weren’t going to let DeAngelo get free.

After his screen, Caprise put his back to the inbounds passer, as if his sole intention was to find another screen to set. Maybe that was the beauty of the play, as the 6-foot-6 Caprise got inside of a remaining defender and quick-pivoted toward the hoop, getting a pass before another help defender could seal the hole.

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With the ball in traffic, Caprise let his instincts take over. He spun around the help defender. One dribble, a pump fake, shot, two bounces on the rim, into the net with 5.8 seconds left, Swarthmore up a point.

Caprise’s work, not done. No timeout, no celebrating. At the other end, the ball quickly ended up on his side. Caprise was the last line of Swarthmore defense. He cut off the ballhandler’s path. When Nichols never got a shot up, Swarthmore’s student section spilled out onto the court to meet Caprise and his teammates, an instant mob scene. Final on Saturday night: Swarthmore 78, Nichols 77.

As Swarthmore prepares to face Christopher Newport at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in the first game of the national semifinals in Fort Wayne, Ind., a question: How did the 6-6 senior even find his way to Swarthmore? By the time Caprise was being recruited out of Virginia Episocopal School, Swarthmore had emerged as a DIII powerhouse. But what’s the path?

“You know, I don’t exactly remember the story,” Caprise said right after Swarthmore won its Sweet 16 game Friday night. “I think maybe I went to Hoop Group camp and got an email. So my friend in high school’s sister played lacrosse at Haverford [College.]”

Caprise said he got up to this area visiting with his friend, and said he was planning on going on Haverford’s regular admissions tour. “But they were closed one day,” Caprise said. “It turns out one of the old assistants here went to my high school and had talked at my high school my freshman year, which my mom had remembered. Which is super convoluted. She said, ‘There’s this other similar place nearby.’”

So, Swarthmore’s admission office was open, and Caprise shot off an email to the basketball coaches, just wanted to say hi. Did they show up?

“Oh yeah,” Caprise said.

Shane Loeffler, Swarthmore’s associate head coach, said while Caprise was hazy on Swarthmore, Swarthmore was not at all vague about Caprise.

“Did he tell you he committed the day after we lost the [2019] national championship?” Loeffler said. “Which was awesome, in terms of lifting us up. … We loved him from the get-go. We wanted him from day one when we saw him.”

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“Just from that, we started a relationship,” Caprise said. “I didn’t have the full landscape of who was good, stuff like that.”

It was not just one random day at Hoop Group, the coach made clear.

“We’d seen him play multiple times,” Loeffler said. “He misremembers. We were very excited about him, for reasons you saw.”

Caprise had just put up 18 points and 11 rebounds (adding 3 assists) in 27 minutes against Keene State in the Sweet 16.

Asked after the Elite Eight crazy win what they have to see in potential recruits, Swarthmore head coach Landry Kosmalski said, “We’re very particular. We say there’s like four buckets. There’s talent, which is first. That’s kind of by itself. The others are, we want smart, tough, unselfish guys. There are a few things that go into those. But that’s in a nutshell. You’ve got to have three of four, or four of four.”

That all sounds logical. There’s a skill set needed, and then there’s a tricky aspect. Kosmalski and his assistants all fell for DeAngelo when each saw him play for the first time. The head coach hustled to the court the first time after watching DeAngelo at Penn’s camp. The Quakers coaches weren’t shy about passing on names of prospects they didn’t quite see as a fit for them. DeAngelo probably could have been on Penn’s bench, and if he was one step quicker, been on the court a lot. In DIII, the 6-1 junior is special, an all-American.

There are some off-beat Swarthmore origin stories. George Corzine, a 6-7 senior, often splits post duties with Caprise. (Corzine had 12 points and five rebounds, all offensive, in his 20 minutes. Caprise had 12 points and five rebounds, all defensive, in his 21 minutes.) Corzine originally was recruited to play tennis at Swarthmore. But he tried out for the basketball team, made it, sat for a couple of seasons, then became indispensable.

Freshman guard Cal Hanson, from Sonora, Calif., emailed Swarthmore’s coaches because his girlfriend’s dad had gone there. This was all real late in the process. Loeffler remembers they told Hanson that although his “grades were awesome” and his film was strong, they needed to see him in person, that he needed to get to their elite camp.

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He did that in August before his senior year, but was sick, “puking all morning I think,” Loeffler said, not making all the shots he usually made on film.

The upshot: They loved him. They loved his footwork. “His feet were amazing. We knew he could score. We wanted to see how he competes, how he defends.”

Hanson starts as a freshman. He’ll be competing and defending next in the Final Four. That last play of the Elite Eight, Hanson was on the court, in the left corner, looking ready if the ball swung around to him. It never got there.

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