Penn Wood’s Ryan Kelly drives through Glen Mill’s defender Laron Wilcox, right, to the basket. Kelly and the Patriots rolled to a 59-43 Del Val League win. (ROBERT GURECKI – DAILY TIMES)
By Matt Smith
The balancing act for head coach Clyde Jones on an afternoon like Tuesday is familiar. There are times when his Penn Wood team needs a reminder to slow down, run through its offensive sets, be more deliberate.
And there are times to just go and play.
The latter is what the Patriots did most effectively in a comfortably 59-43 Del Val League win at Glen Mills Tuesday.
The proof was in the volume level coming from Jones’s bench. He called his first timeout at 2:27 … of the fourth quarter. His opposite number, Glen Mills’ Tony Bacon, whistled for his first stoppage a mere 32 seconds into the game.
That contrast reflects the teams’ relative positions, with Penn Wood starting to figure out workable combinations and Glen Mills forced into its customary midstream recalibration.
But Penn Wood, which had lost four of five games, hadn’t exactly been sailing into the meeting, leaving Jones to tinker.
Enter the idea of Vincent Smalls, basically a lanky shooting guard, playing essentially as a center in the middle of the Patriots’ 2-3 defensive looks.