- The game I went to tonight was the St. Joe's season opener against Colonia, who just this season moved into our division while Edison and Woodbridge moved out. Colonia is a team who always plays us close and I had a feeling going in this game would be no different and it proved to be close. This game certainly had the look for St. Joe's of being a younger, inexperienced team. In the first half, St. Joe's only scored 5 in the first quarter and 11 in the second and trailed 21-16 at half. They were given a big momentum boost when they trailed by 10 with 2:14 left in the half but scored seven points in a row--four free throws by sophomore guard Jimbo Long and a three by senior guard Brandon Dolan to close it out For a while in the second quarter, they looked totally lost, missing easy layups, turning the ball over, etc. However, their defense tightened up and started to force Colonia into predominantly being a perimeter team and their shots stopped falling while Joe's started to shoot better. Matt Wagner, who transferred out of St. Joe's to go to Colonia, hit a 3 to give Colonia a 26-23 lead with 5:07 left in the third on a 3-pointer, St. Joe's wound up going on an 11-2 run thanks in large part to Long's free throw shooting as well as Quenton Decosey who started to play much better after his weak first half where he started 0-4 and started around 1 for 8 I think it was. St. Joe's only shot around 20 percent in the first half at 5 for 24 and in the second half they made 10 of 15 shots for 66 percent shooting. That was really the big story of the night and the fact that this is certainly one of those games St. Joe's can look back on as a progressive win for the team and one that they can use to know they can win in tight spots. Colonia for the most part was a 3 point shooting team and Joe's had a lot more height that Colonia in the forward and center positions. Colonia was led by guards David Cole and C.J. Gray who scored 16 points each.
- Elsewhere, in the county Wardlaw-Hartridge did battle in the GMC Gold Division against one of the favorites usually to win that Division in Dunellen and for a team who struggled last year, Wardlaw-Hartridge has a lot to look forward to suffering a close loss here. This was a close game throughout with Dunellen taking the early 16-11 lead and taking a 31-25 lead into halftime. Wardlaw actually took a 40-39 lead going into the 4th quarter but Dunellen proved to be a little more experienced in this spot thanks to Dylan Hoski scoring 9 of his 19 in the frame. They went on an 11-2 stretch to lead themselves to a 63-60 win. Zach El-Halim scored 13 points for Dunellen, while Jeff Puckett scored 10 and Matt Applegate 9. For Wardlaw Hartridge, they were led by a very solid effort by both Ian English who scored 25 and Justin Davis who had 17. Judging by effots like that, you have ot like Wardlaw to make some noise in the Gold Division now as members of the GMC.
- Moving over to Union County now, you had one of the best rivalries in the state in my opinion going on in Linden vs. Plainfield. Both teams have a long history and both teams have had their fair share of titles over the year. This year Linden looks like a better team but you can expect Plainfield to be there too at the end of the year. Linden is led by senior guard Elijah Hodge and he was ready for his moment tonight against Plainfield. He scored 14 of his 21 points in the second half and one of his classmates, Rodney Sanders added 16 points for Linden, which went 0-3 vs. Plainfield last year. Early on in the game, it was close and they were trading baskets before Linden took off on a 13-0 run which was sparked by Sanders 2 3-pointers and they were up 19-6 two minutes into the second quarter. Plainfield, however, would keep things close, when they outscored Linden 16-7 over the remainder of the half. In that timeframe, they were led by guard Delano Mullings who came off the bench and seven points by Diijon Allen-Jordan who scored 7 during that period and 16 points overall to cut the lead to 26-23. Plainfield went on an 8-0 run to start the second half, the first five were by Sekou Harris, which gave them a 30-26 lead with 5:15 left in the third. Linden answered wiuth a 9-0 burst for the second and last lead change of the game. Sanders hit two free throws and scored on an assist from Hodge, who also got a three point play on that particular play. Harris for Plainfield would hit 2 more threes and 10 of his team-leading 17 points in the fourth quarter, and a three-point play by Justin Sears would draw Plainfield to just 2 with 1:10 to play. However, Hodge made sure Plainfield's comeback bid was for naught and he hit a shot to make it 56-52. And they would score one more free throw to win 57-52. Gotta love Plainfield-Linden battles and you should expect nothing less than games like this when these two play.
- In nothing more than a footnote as it is totally expected, St. Patrick's opened their season with a 32 point win over Westfield. They will now travel down to Florida for the City of Palms Classic.
- Lastly, Monsignor Donovan was the last team in action that I'm covering this season on Friday night. And you talk about exciting atmospheres and I have to say not many beat Shore Conference competition on Friday nights. They are coached by one of New Jersey's most underrated coaches in my opinion in Mike Kearney, who formerly was a coach in Los Angeles and coached players like Andre Miller. They have had some success recently making the Non-Public A final 5 years ago falling to one of the best teams in the state in CBA. They are also one of the teams to show me to never underestimate your opponent and we did just that my sophomore year when our team with the 10th pick in the NBA Draft Andrew Bynum, pretty much got the shit kicked out of us form the beginning of the game and lost by 20 to a under the radar team in Mon Don who came within 2 point sof knocking off the top seed St. Augustine in the game following us. I think this is one of those losses that strengthened both programs. Mon Don hasn't been as good recently but have had good players come through the program just flaling to tougher competition in state and county tournaments. In 06, they made the South A Final losing to a great CBA team 51-47. In 2007, they were the 3 seed who suffered a 40-30 upset at the hands of the 6 seed Camden Catholic. In 2008, they lost a great game at home 61-59 to the 10 seed CBA in a very unfortunate mathcup for Mon Don. They were a very good team that year but had a bad draw getting CBA who's always one of the favorites in the entire bracket in the first round. In 2009, they were a no show to Notre Dame losing by 17 points in Lawrenceville. And in 2010, they were victims of another upset at home to the 7 seed St. Augustine losing 69-68, so this is a team always exciting but have fallen upon rough times in states as of late and lose heartbreakers or have a rough draw. They hope to flip the script this year and get back to their 06 form. In their opener tonight, they're playing Central Regional from Bayville and are undeniably the favorite so the pressure is on them tonight and it will be interesting to see how guard Sean Grennan starts his senior campaign. This game was closer than expected and as expected it was a packed gym in Bayville. Donovan only led 30-24 at halftime and were not able to gain much ground from there winning only by 7, 54-47. This is a game Mon Don can look to improve upon but still a 1-0 record is much better than starting 0-1. Donovan's leading scorer tonight was Anthony Duszczak with 27 points. Sean Grennan added 16. Their lack of scoring options could hurt this team and will need to be able to find more scoring as the season progresses.
Saturday, December 18-Let me start by saying I hate CBA. And I suppose I should, they are undeniably my school, St. Joe's biggest rivals and it seems that we play them in pretty much everything. Over the last 5 years, we've played them 4 times in basketball and 3 times in baseball, which is the two things I helped St. Joe's with by doing scorekeeping and managing. We lost to a great team led by Dan Werner my junior year. They were something like 35-2 that season and played a tournament in Seattle, beat St. Pat's and only lost to St. Anthony's by 2. We lost by 6 at their place less than 45 hours after we won one of the best games I've ever seen deep down the shore at Holy Spirit, near Atlantic City which is about 2 hours from my high school. That game had just about every twist and turn imaginable. Plenty of DI players...their third string forward that year is now playing at Rhode Island...think about that. We were considerable underdogs led by Sean Baptiste, who played his college ball at Fairleigh Dickinson. But the amount of heart both teams showed that night is something I'll never forget. Thanks to us fouling out NC State's Dennis Horner with less than 10 seconds to go we took it to overtime which was one of the most exhilarating things I've ever seen. One of their player Brian Crilley had 4 points to start the overtime, by the end of the fourth, he had in the 30's, and it was by far the most clutch shooting I've ever seen...but he finally missed one at the end of the fourth allowing us to win 94-92. The overtimes were unbelievable. Both teams blowing big leads. I think we blew an 8 point lead with a minute to go. In the 2nd or 3rd ot, they let a 5 point lead slip so it was an unbelievable game and the win against the 5th ranked team in the state was the highest ranked team we've ever beaten so us losing to CBA was not surprising but the fact we only lost by 6 we have an awful lot to be proud of. The following year, we played CBA again at their place losing in OT by 7. This loss was particularly devastating because we had a chance to win at the end of regulation and weren't able to get a shot off. This was also my senior year so it was rough to not be able to be them in our second attempt. However, I knew that year my senior year was going to end very early like mid-May and kinda wanted something to keep me occupied for a little longer while still giving me a chance to hang around all my classmates and friends from high school so I decided to help out the baseball team and I have to say, at the end of the school year it was awesome. The only purpose of us coming back to school was to play and win baseball games. We did that as long as we were able to continue to win. To say we were an inconsistent team that year would be an understatement. We won ugly games. We lost ugly games. We played beautiful baseball at times and at others, we played like total shit. But the bottom line is we made it to the state tournament. We were a 9 seed so we would have to play 3 games on the road just to get to the championship game which would be on a neutral field. Not only did we win those 3, we beat the hell out of them as well beating the 8 seed Red Bank Catholic 6-2, the 1 seed Notre Dame 12-0 where our pitcher threw a controversial 1-hitter when it pprobably should've been a no-hitter, then had a little bit of luck by having to play Holy Cross near Philly who had to move up their game time to 1PM because they had graduation that night so probably weren't as focused as they could've been. We beat them 14-1. The final score was not as indicative of the game. It was close at one point before we exploded in one inning. The turning point easily was when a Holy Cross player did not stpe on the plate after a home run. We threw home afterwards and the run was disallowed. So after this game we had to play CBA on a neutral field with a shot to win the sectional title. We'd be going up against Kyle Slate who would get drafted by the Phillies a few days later. His record? 10-0 with a 0.23 ERA. Obviously we knew this was the type of game that'd be grind it out. If the Holy Spirit game was as great game for basketball given the circumstances us going against a Phillies draftee with as low an ERA as he had with a sectional title on the line and my senior year so there's no tomorrow, this storyline had somehow beat it. We grinded the hell out of this game and thanks to a wild pitch in extra innings we took a 1-0 lead and held on in the bottom to win. It felt great to finally beat them and no less for a sectional title. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Anyway since then, it's been a little closer. We lost to them 2 years ago in baseball but beat the hell out of them last year and lost to them 2 years ago in basketball but at long last, never left any doubt vs. them in basketball this year even without one of our best players playing and a lot of people counted us out and we won. That says a lot about our team's character. Over the last year, the tide has really turned though. We beat them in soccer,volleyball,lacrosse,baseball, and basketball. I guess another thing that I hate about CBA is their arrogance. There's a difference between confidence and arrogance and they are certainly the latter. They expect everything to be given to them and feel they are earned stuff. To me it seems they feel like they are better than everyone. The parents are assholes too. Last year, in our baseball game against them a kid hit the wall and all of us told our players to run home ot which the CBA parents got all up in arms. It's a live ball and it's a crucial moment in the game. Even if he gets hurt they play continues. It continues in every sport. The thing that pisses me off though is that if they were in the same position as us, they would've done the same goddamn thing. So don't be giving us shit about how we're uncompassionate monsters when you guys would've done the same thing. Fuck off. And don't expect me to be compassionate after your pitcher hit one of our better players directly in the skull at 80 mph after getting a hit off him earlier in the game. That could've easily been intentional.
- With all that being said however, a team perhaps I hate more is Don Bosco Prep. They recruit kids from like 3 or 4 states and are always amongst the best in football and baseball. They should not be part of the NJSIAA. They go by different rules than almost every school in the association goes by. CBA and Bosco were playing at the Hoop Group Tip-Off Today in Plainfield. CBA is always one of those teams that start out slow before progressively gaining momentum as the season continues. Gary Nova helped Don Bosco out to a 12-2 lead hitting 3 3 pointers in that stretch. Their first 5 field goals came from behind the arc and they made 8 of their first 10 as they took a 12 point lead into halftime. They did not hit any more threes however, but still maintained a pretty comfortable lead in the second half. They focused primarily on Matt McMullen who scored a game high 29 points. CBA has started vs. tough competition over the last few years but once they get into Shore Conference play they generally pick things up a level and are a forced to be reckoned with. They play Freehold Twp on Monday and Middletown South on Wednesday and those 2 usually are some of CBA's biggest divisional competition.
- Another interesting early on test was going on later today at Plainfield High School where New York powerhouse Rice was playing the Cardinals. It was another wasted effort by Sekou Harris as Rice was just too much for Plainfield. After scoring 17 last night, he put in 26 tonight. Early on in the game there was a couple minute stretch where leads changed hands 8 times. The last quarter of the game was predominantly led by 2 runs. Rice led 52-42 after 3. Plainfield went on a 14-0 run to take a 56-52 lead but then Rice went on a 11-2 run to go back up 63-58 with 2:45 remaining. This has obviously been a tough 2 game stretch to open the season but are some of the better teams Plainfield will face all season so they will be fine and a forced to be reckoned with in both Union County and States. Diijon Allen-Jordan had another 16 point night. Justin Sears had 11 points and 12 rebounds. The free throws made a huge difference in this game shooting only 9 of 22. For Rice, Emmanuel Andujar and Richard Council each had 15 and Melvin Johnson had 14.
- St. Patrick's was playing Michael Jordan's son's high school tonight in Whitney Young in Illinois. Whitney Young is a different program than it was with him and have moved to the background for now while St. Pat's is nationally ranked second behind Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. This game was close in the first half but St. Pat's had broken the game open after the third, outscoring them by 13 in that frame. Derrick Gordon, a Western Kentucky commit, scored 37 points and hit 6 3-pointers. Michael Gilchrist, one of the best players in the nation, who is actually known more for his defense which is a breath of fresh air had a well-balanced game, scoring 13 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists. Samuel Thompson added 17 points and Paul White added 14 for Whitney Young.
Sunday,December 19-
- Most weekends in Jersey don't have Sunday games besides the opening weekend where there's a season opener tournament and later on in the season when other events such as the Primetime Shootout, County Tournaments, and other benefit events are going on but today Linden has a game against Teaneck. Teaneck is often one of the Group III powers but Linden for the most part here never left any doubt. This game is a testament to how good this team is. They played a great defensive 23-13 game in the first half, then picked up their offensive pace in the second half scoring 34 points. However their defense allowed 40, but this was after the game was in hand for Linden. They led 45-29 after 3 and Teaneck outscored them by 12 in the 4th quarter and gave Linden a scare for a little while. Elijah Hodge continued his great play as did Rodney Sanders who combined for 35 points. After leading 47-29 after a tip-in, Teaneck went on a 10-0 run and ignited a 24-7 run in that timeframe. They were held there by sophomore guard Shakir Lindsey who hit 2 3-pointers and 10 points in that time. It was cut to a 54-53 lead for Linden with a minute to go. Hodge who ahd 17 points, sunk 3 of 4 free throws in the final minute. Sanders also had 18 points and 9 rebounds for Linden. They were also helped by Teaneck's bad free throw shooting where they went 8 for 19. Christopher Jones and Joel Hernandez had 13 points apiece for Teaneck. Hernandez also had 12 rebounds.
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