South grad Nathan Plotner making presence felt at collegiate level
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PARKERSBURG -- Washington & Jefferson College head men's basketball coach Ethan Stewart-Smith's recruiting eye for a pair of former Mid-Ohio Valley ballers definitely has helped the Division III Presidents.
Now sophomores, ex-Parkersburg South Patriot Nathan Plotner as well as former Ravenswood Red Devil Matthew Carte are definitely making their presence known for W&J, which competes in the Presidents' Athletic Conference. On Wednesday, second leading scorer Matt Seidl became the 27th player in school history to surpass 1,000 points while Plotner registered his ninth double-double of the campaign during an 84-75 win at Thiel where he scored 17 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and added six stuffs to up his block total to 63.
"We lost some early games in the season especially just trying to build that chemistry," admitted coach Stewart-Smith, whose squad (19-6, 15-5) earned the No. 3 seed in the PAC tournament and will have a home game quarterfinal game on Tuesday inside Salvitti Family Gymnasium. "We've adjusted a tiny bit with just how we function. After last year we realized that our major strengths were two of our interior players with Plotner and Alex Acosta, who is a junior for us.
"Typically last year we would only play one of those guys at a time. That was a little bit of our adjustment this year was getting those two on the floor together for extended periods.
"I just feel like as the year has progressed in general our chemistry, especially on the offensive side, has just gotten so much better as the year has progressed. It's kind of two fold. One, just getting better with chemistry and two just having really good players. We play seven guys consistently that all average between nine and then Nathan is 14.5 and is our leading scorer. Any given night it's really just taking the pressure off individual guys to have to go out there and hit a certain number. Now it's just really being able to take what the defense gives us."
Like Seidl and Carte, a two-time Class AA first team all-state honoree who was named the Little Kanawha Conference's Player of the Year during his senior campaign for head coach Mick Price, Plotner also has started all 25 games.
Aside from leading the team in scoring and blocks, the ex-Patriot paces the Presidents in rebounds (9.9) and field goal shooting (62.6%). In the Division III national leaders, Plotner is 11th in total blocks, 12th in blocks per game, 24th in rebounding, sits ninth in field goal percentage and is tied for 32nd in double-doubles.
"It stems from the work. I mean he's typically the first one in the gym in the offseason," admitted coach Stewart-Smith of Plotner, who was a first team Class AAAA all-state pick as a senior. "He's a leader with small workout groups. He's in here every day bringing different guys in here with him. We knew it was just a matter of time until it really started to click and the other layers of his game started to show up. Last year was mostly a pick-and-roll big and playing in transition with dump downs and finishes.
"This year, you know, we're able to actually play through him with post-up opportunities. Within our pressure system he plays the top of our full court press and he has 52 steals on the year. He's essentially a one-man press. His over activity and motor, it's just really elevated us and it elevates our team. He really sets the tone in the front of the press defensively and then really anchors us on the offensive side with just being able to throw it into him consistently and knowing that he's going to make the right play."
Carte, a psychology major, also has transformed his game after a year in the system. The ex-Red Devil will enter the postseason with averages of 10.7 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists. Carte also leads the team at the charity stripe (77.8%) as well as in 3s made (48) while shooting a team-best 39.3% behind the arc.
"He got off to a little bit of a rocky start dating back to last year," said his coach. "He was just in a little bit of a slump to start the year so if you take away like probably his first 10 or 15 games of his collegiate career he's probably like 45% from 3 so he just really hit the ground running after a good second half of the year last year, and this year he's just improved so much on the defensive side of the ball. Last year in many ways his kind of success was measured by his ability to put the ball in the hoop and this year even when he's not scoring he's got a positive plus-minus.
"He's bringing much more than just scoring and shooting to the table and also with both Matt and Plot, just the winning pedigree has kind of transformed the confidence of our team. These are guys that come from winning programs that have played on big stages and the West Virginia state tournament and just have always expected to be kind of successful and that has really resonated with our team and they are leaders in that regard. There's just no quit in those guys. They just show up and compete at such a high level on a nightly basis."
Plotner, an accounting major who has a near 3.8 GPA overall thus far, admitted when he first got to W&J that "it was hard putting on the red for the first time. It's been good. I love the location up here. There's a bunch to do. It kind of reminds me of Parkersburg. There's like everywhere you can think of to eat.
"There's like places you can fish and places you can go to. I like the winning culture. Two years ago they were preseason number one and came in and competed for a PAC championship and the previous year before that they won one in 2022. Now we're looking to win another one this year. That's the ultimate goal."
The former Patriot said of the switch from playing inside the Rod Oldham Athletic Center for head man Mike Fallon to his new venue "I really like the gym here. It's like an open seating type thing.
"Like an arena style and there's a bunch of places to sit. There's not quite as many people that show up in the student section so it's like a different kind of environment. The student section at the ROAC was just insane."
Being it's only about a two-hour drive back to Parkersburg, Plotner said he was able to come home over Thanksgiving for four days and had about twice as much time over Christmas.
"There's a good mix of going home and staying here," he said. "Me and Matt, we played over in Myrtle Beach in the Big South tournament together during our junior summer. We played AAU together in like fourth grade for the West Virginia Rockets.
"We've always been around each other. It's fun getting to meet new people and building chemistry on and off the court. We come in here and play pickup before the season starts and we just get to know each other and get to know each others play style and run off of that and compete."
W&J only has been defeated by double digits once this season and that came during a 90-71 setback to No. 2 seed Saint Vincent, which also topped the Presidents 93-90. Top-seeped Chatham needed overtime to win at W&J, 74-72, before earning the season sweep with a 92-90 home triumph.
"Every time we've lost we've responded," Plotner said. "Like we haven't lost a game twice in a row. Every time we've lost we've been able to bounce back and find a way to win, and just continue to play through adversity.
"It's hard to beat a team three times so in the playoffs I think we have a really good chance of coming out and competing to win."
The 6-foot-7 pivot admitted W&J's style drew him to the program.
"It's really similar," he said. "That's one of the reasons why I came here was because of the press. We play just like that. It's a fast tempo. We want to get out and run in transition and score off the fastbreak with layups. It's pretty identical to how we play over at South."
The one area where Plotner isn't too happy with the results on the court is at the free-throw line where he's converting at a 61.6% clip.
"Whenever I miss one it just gets in my head and I continue to miss them," he explained. "At the beginning of the year I was shooting better from the free-throw line. It's gone down, but it will be better.
"The transition has been fun. We became a brotherhood over here. We all want to win, just like at South, and now our goal is to win a PAC championship and go on and compete in the national tournament."
The Presidents understand they will need to pull off a couple upsets if they want to go dancing come March, but Plotner hopes to make the most of the opportunity at hand despite knowing he's got two seasons left to continue to improve.
"It was exciting because like last year I was weighing like 190 and then I gained about 15 pounds so I'm like 200, 205," Plotner said of going from year one to year two.
"It's fun to see the work I put in payoff and like be able to show that they trust in me and lean on me to compete. Like last year I was a lot more impatient in the post, but this year I'm a lot more patient."
Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com