(EDITOR’S NOTE: Our new “Building The Program” feature takes a look at teams that have been on the rise the past couple of years under new coaches. We dive into what the vision was when the coach took over and how plans are being implemented to achieve new success. In this edition of Building The Program we take a look at the Moorestown girls basketball team, which is only a few years removed from a 6-win season but this year made it all the way to the sectional semifinals.)
By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
When Matt Emerson took over the Moorestown High girls basketball program three years ago, he was brimming with confidence. A former player for the Quakers, Emerson was all set to install his Princeton-style offense and show the Olympic Conference who’s boss.
Two weeks into his stint the Quakers were 0-4 and had failed to score even 35 points in three of those four games.
“My first year was very rocky. We started out 0-4, then we were 1-5. But then we strung together 15-of-16 after that. At that moment (after an 0-4 start), I was thinking, well, this isn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” Emerson said. “But I had Bill Mulvihill, who’s our girls soccer coach here. He was my assistant that year and he had a lot of experience and helped me out a ton. The girls were learning an entirely new offense and defense and we had totally new expectations than what they previously had here. I run a version of the Princeton offense, which takes a decent amount of time to install. There are a lot of reads and the girls just weren’t familiar with all that, but I was confident in the offense. It’s what I ran in high school, I know it well, so we really just had to keep at it. Fortunately for us, the girls bought in. The wins started happening, and we’ve been on a roll ever since.”
In the covid-shortened 2020-2021 season, Moorestown was just 4-11 and the year before that the Quakers were 6-21. The last time the Quakers were above .500 before Emerson took over was 2016-2017 when they went 16-10 and lost to Ewing in the sectional quarterfinals.
In Emerson’s three seasons, the Quakers are 64-23 and have increased their win total by three each season. This year, Moorestown won a school-record 25 games, finished 25-6, won the Olympic Conference’s Patriot Division with a perfect 10-0 record and were eight seconds away from playing for a sectional title before a devastating overtime loss to Absegami in the South Jersey Group 3 semifinals.
Emerson said he knew there was talent at the school, he just had to find a way to mold it into a winning basketball program.
“We had the athletes, so it was really just teaching them how to read a screen, how to space the floor in transition. If you have athletes, you’re in good shape and you just have to work on the fundamentals. We have open gym at 6 a.m. in the summer and every year we’ve gotten more and more girls to come out to that. We get in the weight room and lift. I’m just trying to build a true program where girls are excited to play,” he said. “It was definitely a challenge to get them to buy in. My first year we lost the first four games but ended up finishing 17-9 and winning the division for the first time in about 20 years. It was just trying to convince them and show them the right way to play basketball. You have to get them to trust you. I tried a lot of team bonding activities because if all you care about is winning, the girls aren’t going to have any fun. So we went to the Elizabethtown College camp this past summer and the girls did a body lab where they do things like foam rolling, cryotherapy, all that kind of stuff. They did a yoga class — anything to get them to understand that it’s bigger than basketball. It’s about being a team and trying to teach them as many life lessons as I can. I really want them to get something out of this on a personal level, and if I can help them be a successful person in society, that’s a win.”
The expectations for the Quakers are different now. They return nearly the entire roster next winter and have their sights set on a sectional championship and beyond. Moorestown is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in South Jersey high school basketball. This season, they beat traditionally strong teams like Cinnaminson, Woodbury, Cherry Hill West, Gloucester Catholic and Cherokee. They made it to the South Jersey Invitational Basketball Tournament championship before falling to Paul VI, and earned a trip to the Burlington County Tournament title game before falling to eventual Group 4 state champion Lenape.
“This year I knew we were going to be very good. I’d be lying if I said we’d break the record for most wins in school history. I knew it was a possibility, but I just know how hard it is to win 25 games with the schedule that we play with Cherry Hill West twice, Shawnee twice, you have Paul VI, Cherokee. And in South Jersey Group 3, there were so many teams that could have made it all the way through. Everyone was very competitive,” Emerson said. “But not making it to the state championship this year or even the sectional final was a huge bummer. That was definitely our goal. I’ve been talking about Mainland since we lost to them in the semifinals last year. I’m very confident that we could have beaten them, but all credit to Absegami. It was just tough. The way that game played out; our best player (sophomore Analyse Intenzo/13.6 ppg) got sick. We still had a chance to win — she’s not the reason we lost — it’s just the way that it played out. As cliché as it sounds, that’s going to fuel us for the next couple of years.”
Emerson said he’s drawn inspiration from the Moorestown girls lacrosse program, which traditionally hasn’t just one of the best teams in the state, but in the entire country. He’s doing everything he can to connect with youth basketball coaches in the area to try to get girls interested in the game as young as possible to keep building that pipeline.
“I was fortunate enough to grow up here. I graduated from Moorestown in 2008, my whole family went to Morristown — so I’m very familiar with the school and how demanding the academics are and how demanding the athletics are. Specifically lacrosse. We’re a huge lacrosse town, so the majority of the girls play that sport and I’m a huge fan of that. Basketball and lacrosse are so synonymous with pass, cut, replace. The way you play defense, you can play zone. You can play man,” Emerson said. “My goal coming in was not to coach a basketball team, but to coach a basketball program. So I kind of just took the vision of what the Moorestown lacrosse team did of integrating everything they do at the youth level and just really trying to build a program from there, then bring it to the high school. I met with each of the grades in the youth league and showed them some of the stuff that we run so they could start running that. I just try to network as much as I can, talking to coaches who I’ve had in the past and just being like a sponge. I also am just very fortunate that I came into a group of girls who just out-work everybody, so it’s an easy group to coach.”
Being an assistant football coach at Moorestown helps Emerson drum up interest in the girls basketball team, he said, and that helps pack the stands for home games.
“I network like crazy to our student population. I also am an assistant coach of varsity football here, so all of my football guys, I’m reaching out to them to come and support the girls. Whatever I can do to get that gym packed because these girls deserve it. They play the game the right way. They play so hard,” he said. “If you appreciate the game of basketball and watching girls compete at the highest level, this group of girls is that kind of team. Our fan base has bought in. I have postings on Facebook and on our team Instagram page, just trying to bring awareness to all the good things that are happening with Moorestown girls basketball.”
So, what’s next for the Quakers? Winning championships. Emerson isn’t shy about coming out and saying exactly what his team’s goals are, and he believes he has the talent to win a lot of big games. Intenzo is a just a sophomore and already one of the best players in South Jersey. She scored more than 400 points this year and hit 67 threes, while juniors Rima Takla and Mae Murphy — who each scored more than 200 points — return as well. The Quakers lose just two seniors and return five of their six leading scorers.
“We have to play more basketball. That’s the main thing. I need to go to more coaching clinics. I need to do more, become a better coach in close-game situations. I have a pretty good handle on it but I can always get better. I have great assistants who help me out a lot, across the board. The main thing this season was they saw how much fun basketball can be. We felt like we should have played in that South Jersey Group 3 final. In my exit interviews they are all saying how they are devoted to playing more basketball in the summer. The sky is the limit for this team, these girls all have expectations to go win a sectional title, which has never been done in Moorestown,” Emerson said. “Our goal is to win South Jersey Group 3, or whatever sectional they put us in, whether it be central or south, doesn’t matter. That’s our ultimate goal. We have goals before that — to win the division, to get better every game.
“With the talent we have — this group of girls is all so close. They’re all extremely tight knit. They’re all best friends. You don’t get that too often in sports. So I understand that it’s a rare opportunity to be fortunate to coach a group of girls like this. It’s my job to try to get them to do as much basketball stuff as they can and for me to work on my coaching as much as I can, and hopefully we achieve our goals.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sullyglorydays@gmail.com; on X @GDsullysays
