February
5, 2006
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| Nick Vier taking the ball to the hole during Bergen Catholic's win over Pascack Hills on Saturday in the Jambo's Round of 16. | |
ALLENDALE -- For the past two weeks, the Bergen Catholic basketball team has been playing at a high level. The Crusaders continued that trend in the Round of 16 at the Oscar F. Thompson Memorial Bergen County Jamboree.
The combination of strength on the boards and balanced scoring was too much for Pascack Hills, as the eighth-seeded Crusaders moved on with a convincing 57-36 win over the ninth-seeded Cowboys at Northern Highlands High school on Saturday afternoon.
The victory sends them to the quarterfinals next weekend against the Fair Lawn-Don Bosco winner, with Bosco being the last team to defeat Bergen Catholic in an overtime contest six games ago.
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| Charles Princiotto (11 points) was the only Pascack Hills player to reach double figures. |
Bergen got double figure scoring from three players and a tremendous job off the boards, outrebounding Hills by a 43-28 margin. Mark Wade had 14 boards and Jonathan Rigg added 8 while also blocking 5 shots.
BC’s ability to keep the Cowboys from owning the paint, along with a pair of three-point field goals from Nick Vier, sent the Crusaders to an early 10-4 lead that they would never relinquish. For Vier, the added help has been the big factor in the BC five-game winning streak. He had 11 points, but after those two threes he was content to set other teammates up (5 assists).
“It takes a lot of pressure off of me,” Vier said of the balanced attack, and Rigg added, “It took us a while to get to that point, but we’re finally there.”
The Bergen Catholic lead was stretched to 17-9 at the end of the first period, and it went up 10 at 23-13 with 4:42 left in the second period. The Cowboys (12-3) could never get back within single digits.
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| BC's Jonathan Rigg pulled down 8 rebounds and blocked 5 shots. |
“I felt good about our team for a long time,” BC head coach Joe Dionisio said. “We just needed to get something going, to get a little more confidence. We’re playing well now. I hope we can keep it going.”
Rigg also had 12 points, including four in a 12-2 run in the third quarter that sent the Crusaders (10-5) up 38-17 and ended any chance of a Hills comeback.
The rest of the game saw BC continue its balance. Ricky Carroll had 10 of his game-high 17 points in the fourth quarter, while the Bergen defense refused to wilt. Hills shot 0 for 10 in the final period, making only 9 of 55 shots in the game and 1 of 12 three-point tries. They hit 17 of 26 free throws.
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| Pascack Hills' Evan Lampert grabbed 10 if his 15 rebounds in the first half. |
Conversely, Bergen was 23 of 52 from the floor (2 of 11 behind the arc) and 9 of 12 at the foul line.
“With such an inexperienced team coming back, guys had to learn their roles,” Dionisio related, “and now they’re comfortable in knowing what they have to do and doing a great job. It’s chemistry, it’s trusting your teammates and not trying to do too much. We’re much better together than we are individually.”
“We’re pretty much interchangable,” Carroll noted. “Our guards can go down low and the big guys can come out.”
Charles Princiotto was the only Hills player to reach double figures, scoring 11 points. The interior work by Bergen Catholic held Evan Lampert to just two field goals and 9 points, though he did grab 15 rebounds (10 in the first half).
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| BC's Ricky Carroll had 10 of his game-high 17 points in the fourth quarter |
“In the beginning of the season, I was trying to get a feel for (varsity),” Rigg commented. “Now, I’m more aware of boxing out and getting a body on guys.”
While the Bosco rematch next week is on the schedule now, the Crusaders are still concerned about a pair of league games this week.
“The key to the last two weeks is that we’ve been taking one game at a time and not looking forward,” Vier said. “That’s definitely helped us and we’re getting better every day.”
FOR MORE PHOTOS OF THIS GAME OR TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT OF THIS GAME STORY, PLEASE VISIT 4FeetGrafix.com.
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