February
14, 2006
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| Xavier McAden helped lead Fort Lee to the Jamboree semifinals for the first time since 1999. | |
PARAMUS -- Having played twice already this season and as recently as Tuesday, there were few secrets between Fort Lee and Westwood. Each knew the other well, and having split the first two games, they met in the rubber match in the Bergen County Jamboree quarterfinals on Monday night.
It was the Bridgemen who tried something different, and while it didn’t work like they thought it would, the overall effectiveness still brought them the desired result as they eked out a 33-31 win over the Cardinals to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1999.
The game wasn’t decided until the last tenth of a second, when Cory Raji stepped to the free throw line for Westwood (18-4) with two shots and the chance to tie the game. Having hit his first seven attempts of the game, he missed on the front end before having the second try wiped out by a lane violation.
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| Corey Raji scored more than half of Westwood's points (19) and added 19 rebounds and 5 blocked shots. |
“Corey’s taken us this far and won plenty of games for us,” Cardinal head coach Frank Connelly said. “This isn’t about free throws, this was about us not getting him the ball enough the whole game.”
A good part of that inability came from the Fort Lee game plan, which was to slow down the pace and limit the number of possessions for Westwood.
“With most teams, we want to run up and down,” FL head coach John Ziemba explained, “but with Raji dominating the boards, the more shots go up, the more putbacks he gets. I didn’t think it would be this low-scoring, but it frustrated them.”
“You’ve got to take a chance, and we took a chance,” he continued. “We did something new offensively. It didn’t work, but the bottom line is we needed to slow the possessions down and that’s what happened. We got a little lucky at the end.”
The end was a pair of foul shots by Xavier McAden with 12.3 seconds left that broke a 31-31 tie. Westwood had knotted the game on a Raji layup off an inbounds pass with 52 seconds left. The Bridgemen began working for a last shot, and McAden was about to get double teamed up high when he was fouled.
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| Pedro Burgos finished with 11 points for Fort Lee. |
He made the freebies, and Westwood inbounded to Anthony Pillari, who went the length of the court but came up short on a drive from the right side. Gerald Soriano got the rebound for Fort Lee (16-5) and handed it to Pedro Burgos, who was fouled with 4.7 seconds on the clock.
He uncharacteristically missed both free throws, with Raji rebounding and outletting to Pillari, who was fouled with 1.3 showing. Pillari threw up a shot that banked in for what would have been a go-ahead three-pointer, but the shot was clearly after the whistle for the foul and was appropriately waved off.
The long inbounds lob went to Raji underneath, and Soriano got a body on him to avoid a shot while drawing the foul, which led to the final misses.
“I told them, we’ve been struggling,” Ziemba commented, “but we were one win away from getting it back. That shows how it goes.”
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| Anthony Pillari hit a jumper late on the fourth quarter to keep Westwood in it. |
The slow tempo had both teams shooting poorly and using poor shot selection. Fort Lee was just 6 of 19 in the first half and Westwood was 4 of 18, with the Bridgemen holding a meager 16-13 lead.
While Raji was working the boards hard (19 rebounds and 5 blocked shots to go with 19 points), Fort Lee Ilja Dejanovic was making a key contribution with Soriano in foul trouble. Dejanovic had 7 rebounds and 2 blocked shots along with a steal.
“He does all the stuff no one else wants to do,” Ziemba said of his workhorse. “He doesn’t care if he doesn’t score (he had two points), he laughs when he doesn’t score. He has no ego.”
The teams traded the lead in the third quarter, with Westwood going up 22-18 on the strength of a seven-point run that was culminated by a Max Padula three-pointer. Fort Lee came back with seven straight of their own, including a McAden three ball in the middle.
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| Maks Reznick hit two free throws to give Fort Lee a 29-24 lead late in the fourth quarter. |
The Bridgemen had a 25-24 lead going into the fourth quarter and seemingly took control with six straight points. A jumper by Burgos (11 points) and two free throws by Maks Reznik preceded a three-minute scoreless stretch before McAden hit a pair at the line with 1:37 to go.
Pillari hit a jumper in the lane and Padula (10 points) drained a three with 59 seconds to go before Raji’s tying bucket set up the closing sequence.
Westwood had a lousy shooting game, hitting 11 of 41 from the floor (2 of 15 from behind the arc), and Sam Hayes was shut out, shooting 0 for 7 and 0 for 6 on threes.
“He’s our second leading scorer (15 points per game), and if he’s going to come up with zero, we’re going to struggle, without a doubt,” Connelly lamented.
Fort Lee wasn’t much better, shooting 11 of 38 from the field (4 of 10 threes) and 7 of 11 at the line. McAden had 13 points, but Soriano did not score and had 6 rebounds.
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