The Panthers made it to the playoffs for the fifth year in a row. They entered the Little East Conference basketball tournament as the sixth seed. They faced off with the third seed University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Corsairs in the first leg of the tournament. The Panthers just barely made it into the playoffs and they were looking for some playoff magic as they had to face a team that had only lost seven times during the regular season.
The game started off bad as Plymouth was down 7-0 in the first two minutes of the game and the game got away from them. Plymouth was able to score four points in a row to make it 4-9, but the Corsairs were able to push their lead to 11 after the eleventh minute as the score was pushed to 21-10. Plymouth was able to mitigate the deficit as the brought the Corsairs’ lead to six over the next four minutes with the score changing again to 25-19. The half ended with UMass Dartmouth leading by nine points and a score of 33-24. The first half was abysmal as their field goal percentage was 32 and their three-point percentage was 16.7. To add to the disappointment, the Panthers gave up 16 turnovers and only produced four assists.
Plymouth was hoping things would turn around after the half-time adjustments and they did as they scored their first two baskets, but it went south from there. UMass Dartmouth would proceed to push their lead to 20 with the score being 58-38 in the tenth minute of the second half. Plymouth would try their best but the couldn’t create any momentum as the rest of the game the point differential hovered around 20 points. And the game end with the score 83 to 65 with the Corsairs winning at home.
This marks the end of the 2018-19 season for the Panthers as they finished the regular season 13 and 13. Unfortunately, this was the game for all the seniors on the team, Janvier Johnson (Windsor CT), Liam Densmore (Portland, Maine), Chris Calnan (Wakefield, Mass.), Mike Osgood (Nashua, N.H.) and Mark DiLauro (North Branford, Conn.). Though there are some positives to come out of the loss. Plymouth now has a number of freshman they can start building their future around with Manny Alisandro (Manchester, N.H.) and Dante Rivera (Methuen, Mass.), in addition, they’ll have veterans Jalen LeRoy (Manchester, N.H.) and Joe Simpson (Manchester, N.H.) for their senior season. With most of the Panthers’ starters returning in addition to all the freshman becoming acclimated to the college atmosphere making Plymouth a dangerous team for next year.