West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Malachi Jeffers-Viera, center, moves through the the Delran defense to score during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North coach Luke Beesely talks to his team during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Blake Amos Whitfield, left, shoots the ball over the defense of Delran’s Jack Jordan, right, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Aaryan Dadan, left, shoots the ball over the defense of Delran’s Andrew Reim, right, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Blake Amos Whitfield looks to move the ball against Delran during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Delran’s Jackson Veneziano, left, goes to pass the ball as he’s trapped by West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Malachi Jeffers-Viera, center, and Blake Amos Whitfield, right, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Malachi Jeffers-Viera shoots a 3-pointer against Delran during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Blake Amos Whitfield, right, lays the ball in the basket as Delran’s Dean Kneib, left, defends during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Delran’s Jack Jordan, left, pulls down a rebound in front of West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Aarav Mohan, right, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Delran’s Shane Kingsmore, left, brings the ball up the floor as he’s defended by West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Ronit Joneja, right, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Ryan Jean-Baptiste, center, puts up a shot between two Delran defenders during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Delran’s D.J. Reissman, 2, puts up a shot over three West Windsor-Plainsboro North defenders during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Cameron Jones, right, looks to drive to the basket as Somerville’s Brian Palko, left, defends during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Adriel Dominguez, right, shoots a 3-pointer as Somerville’s Tim LaCanna, left, leaps to block it during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Kokulnath Ramasamy, right, tries to move around the defense of Somerville’s Spencer Carran, left, during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Josiah Cureton passes the ball to a teammate against Somerville during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) West Windsor-Plainsboro South’s Will Yang passes the ball to a teammate during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Show Caption1 of 17West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Malachi Jeffers-Viera, center, moves through the the Delran defense to score during a Knights Holiday Classic game on Friday afternoon at West Windsor-Plainsboro North in Plainsboro. (Kyle Franko/ Trentonian Photo) Expand PLAINSBORO — There aren’t many players in New Jersey who are literally in the middle of everything a team does on the court — from scoring, to rebounding, to pushing the floor and finding open teammates. Malachi Jeffers-Viera is playing that Superman role brilliantly for West Windsor-Plainsboro North boys basketball, only he doesn’t exactly view it that way. “I’m just playing with my friends,” Jeffers-Viera says. Well, the 6-foot-5 senior forward sure accomplished a lot while playing with his friends Friday as he dropped 22 points and 15 rebounds to lead the host team past Delran, 70-40, in the first round of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Holiday Classic. “I think one of his best attributes is he’s not looking for stats, he’s not looking for this or that — he’s trying to win,” coach Luke Beesley said. “I think his best game he played all year was the Robbinsville game. He scored four points, but he just controlled the game. You could see it. He just controls the game.” WW-P North is off to the program’s first 4-0 start in at least two decades, but the Knights had to overcome a fairly stiff challenge against Delran (1-2) and a slow start in their first game of the holiday break. The contest was tied at halftime and then the Bears took their first lead in the opening minute of the third quarter, but the Knights took control after that with a 16-2 run. “Steals and defense,” Jeffers-Viera said. “Our motto is ‘defense to offense,’ so once we get our steals and get out in transition, we start scoring and we start flowing. If you’ve seen all our games, second half we turn the other team over a lot, so I think just using that and getting out in transition (makes it) easy.” North had three other players score double figures including Ryan Jean-Baptiste (11 points), Kai Gibson (10 points) and Blake Amos-Whitfield (10) points). Amos-Whitfield is a junior transfer from WW-P South, but this veteran squad has eight seniors and is looking to make history that hasn’t been done at North. “I’ve been playing with them since I’ve been 13 years old,” Jeffers-Viera said. “Some of them are my best friends. We play basketball outside of school, so it’s just a chemistry thing. After practices we go get food, so we’re just really comfortable playing with each other. We compete at practice, so we just have a really tight bond.” In four seasons under Beesley, North has improved from a record of 2-18 to 4-19, to 14-13, and to possibly even more wins this winter. “We were a deep last year, but I think it’s confidence and their abilities,” Beesley said. “A lot of these guys were on the team last year, so they played last year and maybe didn’t score as much, but this year they’re very confident that they can score, and if they take a shot from the perimeter, they’re gonna make it and it’s a good shot.” Jeffers-Viera says Beesley makes practices fun in a way that everyone develops a love for basketball, regardless of whether you’re a starter or coming off the bench. “It’s just a crazy shift because if you think about our school, you don’t really think about our basketball team being very good or really any sport, necessarily,” Jeffers-Viera said. “But he came in, he started making changes instantly. We’re playing games over the summer — we didn’t ever do that before. So we’re just constantly getting work in over the summer, and he’s also bringing guys in. My freshman year, no one would come to summer workouts. This year, everyone wants to be at summer workouts. So he’s just changing the culture around here.” As for the opportunity to do something special this year, Jeffers-Viera thinks back to when he was starting as a sophomore and other teams with seniors bullied the Knights. Now the opposite effect has taken place, and North is the only remaining undefeated team in the CVC. Two of North’s wins are against Robbinsville and Hopewell Valley, who both moved up to the conference’s Colonial Division while North stayed in the Valley Division. So the Knights want to be that breakout team that no one saw coming. “None of them think we’re capable of beating them,” Jeffers-Viera said. “They think it’s gonna be a walkover when they see us, so I think we take that personally and we just want to show we’re a top team in this division and it’s not gonna be an easy game.” Tournament Notes North advanced to face either Delaware Valley or Palmyra in Saturday’s semifinals, with the winner of that game moving to Monday’s championship. Earlier on Friday, WW-P South fell to Somerville by the score of 48-30 despite 16 points from Cam Jones. South will play again in consolation games Saturday and Monday. Adriel Rodriguez added 11 points and Isaiah Cureton netted a 3-pointer for the Pirates (1-5), who are young and have depth issues with only three players on their bench throughout Saturday’s game because of three players being out. “It’s a work in progress,” South coach Chris Gero said. “The last two years we’ve graduated all of our size (that) we haven’t really been able to replace. We’ve been battling a little bit of injury and illness, which leads to only having eight guys dressed today which definitely makes it tough.” Gero praised Jones, a senior and third-year varsity player who has the upside to play in college. “This year it’s his team,” Gero said. “He’s continued to develop. He’s gotten bigger, stronger. He’s a kid that works out every day in the offseason, so I think it’s definitely on the table (playing in college). It’s something that he and I are talking about and kind of weighing out his options.” This is the second year of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Holiday Classic, which last year was played at South while the girls teams played at North. The plan is to alternate each year going forward. “Jeff (Reilly) and Kate (Dobinson) have a really good job of running this,” Gero said. “This year we were able to have seven of the eight teams back. We only had one change from last year on the boys’ side, so I think it’s worked out really well.”