Malcolm Thomas Q&A: DeMatha’s season, ACIT Championship, recruiting

In a battle of Maryland high school powerhouses this pastweekend, the DeMatha Stags dominated Bishop McNamara with an 89-58win in the 2023 Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournamentchampionship game.

With an array of three-pointers by their talented trio of seniorguards Jaden Winston, Mason So and Isaiah Arnold — and thunderousdunks by the sole junior in the starting lineup, Malcolm Thomas —the Stags ran away with the victory in front of a stunned crowd.Nobody had predicted this outcome by that large of amargin.

The win marks DeMatha’s fourth straight ACIT crown and its 27thoverall.

I caught up with Malcolm Thomas after the game to discuss theteam’s championship win, an up-and-down season, adjusting to a newcoach, his recruiting and much more.

(Photo Credit: Jonathan Spinks)

Etan Thomas: So your junior season has come toa close. It was your first season under new head coach Mike Jones.You all avenged regular-season losses against St. John’s and BishopMcNamara, and now, you won the ACIT championship. How does itfeel?

Malcolm Thomas: "It feels good. We’ve spent allseason trying to put everything together. We had a tough two-pointloss in the [Washington Catholic Athletic Conference] tournament to[St. Paul VI], but we had one more tournament to go. The final fourwas all WCAC teams, and it feels good to end the season on a goodnote."

Etan: Everyone was talking about your matchupwith Donnie Freeman in the semifinals. College coaches kept talkingabout it to me, fans were asking about it all weekend. This was thehead-to-head matchup everyone wanted to see. It was a greatovertime win — you had 18 points to his 15 — but talk to me aboutthat game and that matchup in particular.

Malcolm: "The DMV as a whole is verycompetitive, and me and Donnie will be matching up again over thesummer during AAU and will match up again next season. I think it’sgreat, and it’s fun to go back and forth with someone like that andfor people to be excited to see the matchup. We push each other andthat’s how it’s supposed to be."

Etan: There has been a lot of criticism of newcoach Mike Jones in his first year. It’s been an adjustment period.I mean, this is your third coach in three years, so I don’t see howanyone could expect there not to be an adjustment period. Buteverything came together at the end with a decisive 30-pointblowout of Bishop McNamara. The entire gymnasium was shocked,especially since they played so well against Gonzaga [DC] the gamebefore. But talk about that process of going through the ups anddowns of the season and the adjustment period and how you all grewas a team.

Malcolm: "One of the biggest things Coach Jonespreached all year is that no matter what happens, make sure we arealways growing and always learning and getting better, and that’swhat we did. We started off well at the beginning of the year, tooka few dips as the season went on and we ended well. So we were ableto withstand the adversity and not crumble when things weren’tgoing right, and that’s a credit to the leadership of ourcoaches."

Etan: You have a lot of talented guys comingback, some that people may not know about. What can DeMatha fanslook forward to seeing next season?

Malcolm: "We have a lot of talent like yousaid. And we had a lot of seniors on this team, so many of [ourplayers] had to take a back seat and wait and be patient, butyou’re going to see next year. Coach did this thing in practicetoward the end where he put underclassmen against upperclassmen,and we won our fair share of games against the seniors. But yes, wehave a lot of talent coming back and they’re going to make a bigimpact next year."