Well, it finally happened. In the most improbable of circumstances, St. Joe's defeated CBA by a final score of 60-49. It was a game almost no one thought we had a chance to win after sophomore forward Quenton Decosey was ruled out for disciplinary action. Many people thought we'd almost certainly lose by double digits, but we hung with them and played one of the best defensive games I've seen in the 6 years I've been associated with St. Joe's basketball. After being told the news that Quenton was not playing, I knew it'd be a little more difficult without him but knew we had more than a puncher's chance to win the game. If not for such a bad start last year, we would've had a great chance against them. I also believed that we got better and they got worse with the losses of 6'7 center Pat Light and their sharpshooter Brian Neller. After viewing tonight, I believe I was right. They're a little worse than the traditional CBA team, but nonetheless, an extremely formidable team who would give fits to nearly every team in the state of New Jersey. They simply were not as deep as their teams in the past and we did everything we had to do in order to win the game tonight. For the most part, we threw clean passes and found the open man when we were trapped and trying to get rid of the ball. We held the ball late without turning it over. We got the key rebounds late in the game. We showed as much grit tonight as the United States did against Canada in game 1 a couple weeks ago. CBA lost in a fashion I thought they would if they were to ever lose to us and that was tenacious defense by us guarding the three pointer and we had to get a little lucky with CBA at the line, who are consistently the best HS shooting team there. We were able to have both. CBA only made 4 threes the entire game to our 9 and they missed some free throws which would've allowed them to remain in the game. This is a hell of a win for St. Joe's and one of the best weeks they've had in a long time. It is certainly the best week in Coach Turco's tenure in capturing the GMC Title and beating their archrivals 5 days apart from each other. In this week he captured the GMC Coach of the Year and then showed it out of conference play tonight with a great defensive gameplan and solidified his place as one of the best coaches in NJ high school basketball. I'm damn proud of all this team's accomplished this year and how they completed both the goals I had coming in as scorekeeper 5 years ago which was to win a championship of some sort and also knock off CBA. At this point, why stop there? We are two away from the sectional title and three from the group title and a spot in the TOC. Camden Catholic is obviously going to be very tough, but if we play like we did tonight, we have a shot and that's all you can ask for when you're in a consistently tough bracket such as ours. All these public school teams have such a bullshit route to this far in the tournament. I like playing teams this good because it helps prepare you for the later stages of the tournament and NONE of these games are walks in the park. You have to come ready every game or you will get beat. That's why I find the parochial games particularly exciting because all the games are usually close and upsets do tend to happen. Should be a great game Monday and I think the winner there takes the section. Now onto my record for this evening.
42-13 in Group I games
42-6 in Group II games
40-16 in Group III games
34-14 in Group IV games
14-5 in Non-Public A games
13-3 in Non-Public B games
16-8 in last nights games
185-57 overall
Here's my picks for today. I'm blogging now since I plan on going to a couple games today and they start pretty early.
North I, Group II(Spreads according to Born Power Index)
#8 Pequannock-3.5 over #5 River Dell
#2 Indian Hills-1 over #3 Elmwood Park
North II, Group II
#8 Newark Tech-10 over #5 Garfield
#15 Science Park-11.5 over #6 Caldwell
Central, Group II
#5 ManasquanPK over #1 Willingboro
#3 Shabazz-17 over #7 Rumson
South, Group II
#1 Collingswood-8 over #5 Middle Twp.
# 2 Haddon Hgts.-9 over #11 Buena
North I, Group IV(Spreads according to Born Power Index)
#9 East Orange-8.5 over #13 Montclair
#2 Paterson Kennedy-5.5 over #6 Union City
North II, Group IV
#1 Plainfield-10.5 over #4 Ridge
#2 Hillsborough+7.5 over #6 Union
Central, Group IV
#4 Montgomery+2.5 over #8 Colts Neck
#11 North BrunswickPK over #10 Marlboro
South, Group IV
#1 Cherokee-2 over #12 Lenape
#2 Shawnee-6 over #6 Atlantic City
Non-Public B
#1 Paterson Catholic-31 over #13 St. Mary's (J.C.)
#2 St. Anthony-35 over #3 Montclair Kimberley
#1 Trenton Catholic-31.5 over #4 Mater Dei
#3 Cardinal McCarrick-5.5 over #2 Gloucester Catholic
Now onto my college predictions for tonight as there are many tournaments starting to get into full gear. Here are my records first as to how I'm doing through 4 nights of conference tournament games.
3-3 Atlantic Sun(Up to Semis)
4-2 Big South(Up to Semis)
2-2 Colonial Athletic Association Opening Round
2-4 Horizon League Second Round
2-0 Metro Atlantic Opening Round
4-2 Missouri Valley Quarterfinals
2-2 Northeast Quarterfinals
4-2 Ohio Valley(Up to Semis)
3-1 Patriot League Quarterfinals
3-1 Southern Conference Opening Round
1-1 West Coast First Round
14-8 in last nights games
30-20 Overall
Now onto today's games.
America East Quarterfinals
#1 Stony Brook over #8 Albany
#4 Boston over #5 Hartford
#2 Vermont over #7 UMBC
#6 New Hampshire over #3 Maine
Atlantic Sun Championship
#5 ETSU over #6 Mercer
Big Sky Conference First Round
#3 Montana State over #6 Portland State
#4 Montana over #5 Northern Arizona
Big South Championship
#1 Coastal Carolina BIG over #3 Winthrop
Colonial Athletic Association Quarterfinals
#1 Old Dominion over #8 Towson
#4 George Mason over #5 VCU
#2 Northeastern over #7 Hofstra
#3 William and Mary over #11 James Madison
Horizon League Semifinals
#2 Wright State over #7 Detroit
#1 Butler over #4 Milwaukee
Metro Atlantic Quarterfinals
#1 Siena over #9 Manhattan
#4 St. Peter's over #5 Rider
#2 Fairfield over #7 Canisius
#6 Niagara over #3 Iona
Missouri Valley Semifinals
#1 Northern Iowa over #5 Bradley
#2 Wichita State over #3 Illinois State
Ohio Valley Championship
#2 Morehead State over #1 Murray State
Southern Conference Quarterfinals
#2N Western Carolina over #6N Elon
#1S Wofford over #4N UNC-Greensboro
#1N Appalachian State over #4S The Citadel
#2S College of Charleston over #3N Chattanooga
Summit League Quarterfinals
#1 Oakland over #8 UMKC
#2 IUPUI over #7 Western Illinois
Sun Belt First Round
#9 South Alabama over #8 Florida Atlantic
#4 Western Kentucky over #13 New Orleans
#5 Arkansas State over #12 Arkansas-Little Rock
#11 Florida International over #6 Denver
#7 Louisiana-Lafayette over #10 Louisiana-Monroe
West Coast Quarterfinals
#5 Loyola Marymount over #4 San Francisco
#3 Portland over #6 San Diego
So there are my picks for today. It should be a great weekend for basketball. Mine's already gotten off to a good start with the triumphant win last night. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see some more great games over the course of this weekend, but I doubt any will beat the 5 OT game that Passaic Valley and Old Tappan played last night lol. The three games I plan on going to today are Cherokee-Lenape at 1, Cardinal McCarrick-Gloucester Catholic at 4 and Ridge-Plainfield at 7. They should all be great games and it will be interesting to see who's left standing after today when the field is dwindled down from 64 to 44 going into the second week of this years basketball tournament. Tomorrow will be an off-day for the state tournament, but I'll be back with more conference tournament picks with my prediction for the Missouri Valley Championship as well as my semifinal picks for the Patriot and West Coast Conferences and more.
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