Janiary
29, 2007
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| Anthony Taborba came to play as the Wood-Ridge senior scored 31 points and he added 8 rebounds, 5 steals and 4 assists as the Blue Devils handed Leonia its first loss of the season. | |
PARAMUS -- Anthony Taborda knew the deal. He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that everyone in the Paramus Catholic High School gymnasium on Sunday afternoon was waiting to see just how he would fare in the game within the game, the head-to-head battle with Leonia’s Ahmad Hassan.
“This is such a different atmosphere,” Taborda said of the overflow crowd. “Last night I couldn’t sleep, and I had butterflies all day.”
Taborda did not disappoint as he played a solid two-way game in leading Wood-Ridge to an 80-69 win over previously undefeated Leonia to advance to the Round of 16 next Sunday at Tenafly High School.
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| Leonia's Ahmad Hassan scored a team-high 25 points, but was held 11 points below his season average. |
The 19th seeded Blue Devils will face the third seed, presently undefeated Pascack Hills, in an 11:30 a.m. tip-off. It also marks the first Jamboree win for the Devils since 2003 and the first for Taborda after three losses in their opening game.
In the matchup with Hassan, Taborda got the best of the Lion senior, scoring 31 points on 12 of 20 shooting (3 of 7 on three-point field goals), and he added 8 rebounds, 5 steals and 4 assists.
Hassan had 13 first quarter points but was held in check the rest of the way. He finished with 26 points on 10 of 23 from the floor (3 of 8 on threes), with 2 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 assists.
The game within the game wasn’t the reason that Wood-Ridge (13-2) prevailed as much as the play of Anthony Solano and Jake Pietrasz. They combined for 32 points and took turns doing damage to the Lions (15-1).
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| Anthony Solano came out on fire, hitting all four of his first half 3-pointers on his way to 18 points for Wood-Ridge. |
“They did a lot of the dirty work,” Taborda said of his teammates, “doing the rebounding and stuff.”
It was Solano who set the tone, hitting all four of his first half three-point field goal tries on the way to 18 points.
“We know we’re going to get consistent play from (Christian) Muniz and Taborda,” WR head coach Ed Rendzio said. “When Solano came out right away, that actually relaxed our guys and we just picked it up from there.”
While Solano was firing, Taborda and Muniz were causing grief defensively. Rendzio used three different players on Hassan during the game, with Muniz getting the call the majority of the time.
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| Andrew Levy finished with 11 points for Leonia, which fell to 15-1 on the season. |
“We went straight man-to-man,” Rendzio explained, “and we decided to give no help on him. Every now and then, we’d run one guard at him and the second guard would shoot the gap, and that’s how we got a couple of those early steals.”
Taborda had 10 of his points in the latter half of the first period, which ended knotted at 22. The defense forced Hassan to take challenged shots, and he went cold in the second period.
Wood-Ridge took advantage to move out to a 42-36 lead at the intermission, and they started to pull away in the third quarter as Pietrasz began crashing the offensive boards and creating second chance points.
He finished with 14 points (12 in the second half) and had 6 of his 8 rebounds off the offensive glass. Back to back putbacks by Taborda and Pietrasz gave the Blue Devils their first double digit lead at 52-40 with 4:50 left in the third period.
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| Christian Muniz chipped in on the offensive end but did most of his damage on the other end, chasing Ahmad Hassan all over the floor. |
Up 60-50 after three quarters, Wood-Ridge staved off any Lion comeback hopes with a pair of Taborda three-pointers, the second making it 66-55 with 6:48 left in the game. Leonia never got closer than nine points.
The Devils shot 32 of 58 from the floor (8 of 16 on threes) and were 8 of 15 at the free throw line. Leonia was 29 of 61 on field goals and 6 of 7 at the line. The Lions got 13 points from Chris Carillo and 11 from Andrew Levy, while Jairo Amparo had 9 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals.
FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THIS GAME OR TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT OF THIS STORY, PLEASE VISIT 4FeetGrafix.com.
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