March
6, 2007
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| Megan
Tobia assisted on all four Old Tappan baskets during a 9-2 fourth quarter
run that finally broke Teaneck's back in Monday's North 1, Group 3 State sectional final. |
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BAYONNE -- In search of its first ever State girls basketball title, Old Tappan could have changed its style. Knowing that Teaneck was going to use its full-court pressure defense to try to create turnovers and turn the game into a horse race, the Golden Knights could have countered, they could have slowed the pace and opted for a foot race. But that would have gone against Old Tappan's nature and the Knights instead turned to the whip.
“I think we have good athletes. We can run up and down the floor and play at the pace that they wanted to play at,” said Old Tappan head coach Brian Dunn. “People might assume that we wouldn’t want to play at that pace, but we are comfortable running up and down. We can play in the half-court, but running is what we do.”
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| Junior Tamiel Murray led Teaneck with 13 points. |
Old Tappan made a bid to pull away in all four quarters and its last spurt, a 9-2 run that took just 2:46 to put together midway through the fourth, was the one that finally stuck as the Golden Knights posted a 56-48 win and claimed their first-ever State sectional title at Bayonne High School.
“This is just absolutely amazing, especially after last year. We thought we had such a good team with Alexis [Keller] and Kaitlyn [Kiely] and when we lost [to Wayne Hills in the quarterfinals] and they graduated, it was like what are we going to do now?” said Lisa Jaris, Old Tappan’s junior center. “So this is absolutely incredible that we are standing here right now with our first state championship.”
Jamie Zavardino made her first three shots of the game, two midrange jumpers and a three-pointer, to help Old Tappan get off to a fast start, but it was Teaneck that held the lead after the first quarter. A Rebecca Florcyzk jumper and a Chattory Jones-Clark putback had the Highwaywomen ahead 15-13 after the first eight minutes, but that was one of only three leads, all of the two-point variety and for a total of 1:24 of game clock, that Teaneck held in the game.
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| Junior Chanel Van Dyke scored 13 oif her 16 points in the second half as Old Tappan went on to win its first-ever sectional championship. |
Old Tappan’s first real bid to pull away came late in the second quarter. A 9-0 run started by two Jaris free throws and ending with a Chanel Van Dyke freebie with 2:03 to go in the first half gave the Knights a 24-17 lead and Jaris’ putback with 32 seconds left had the Knights ahead 26-21 at the break.
“In the first half I didn’t think we did a very good job and we didn’t play all that well. We were fortunate to come out of there with a five-point lead,” said Dunn. “But at key times I thought we were able to break the press, break them down on defense and get a couple of easy baskets off it.”
Old Tappan was up seven when Van Dyke hit a jumper from the corner 2:47 into the second half, but Teaneck, which is not as deep as it was when the season started and was battling foul trouble, didn’t let the Knights run away and hide.
Two straight baskets by Rachel Furman, Teaneck’s only bench player to score, got the Highwaywomen back to within 30-29 and a Jones-Clark basket inside tied the game at 33. It was still tied at 35-all at the end of three quarters and at 38 with 5:48 left in the game after Tamiel Murray’s driving layup.
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| Rebecca Florcyzk knocked down 11 points for Teaneck, which finished its season with a 21-7 record. |
But Teaneck had no answer for Old Tappan’s final run and it was all set up by the passing of senior guard Megan Tobia. After Van Dyke made two free throws to put the Knights ahead for good at 40-38, Tobia assisted on four straight Old Tappan baskets in a span of less than just two minutes.
She set up Alex Radetsky in transition, fed Van Dyke in the post and, after a Florcyzk jumper interrupted the run, Tobia set up the same two players again for open looks. Radetsky scored inside and Van Dyke nailed a three-pointer from the corner to put Old Tappan up 49-40 with 3:02 to play. That just about ended the drama and Old Tappan was able do just enough from the foul line in the final minute to clinch its first sectional title.
“A lot of our girls scouted Teaneck before and we thought we could come in here and run with them and that is what we did,” said Van Dyke, who had a tough job on the defensive end guarding Tiffany Conner. “Coach [Dunn] thought we could do it and he was right, so we just played our game.”
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| Lisa Jaris had 16 points and a game-high 13 rebounds for Old Tappan. |
Conner finished with 9 points for Teaneck (21-7), which got a team-high 13 from Murray. Florcyzk added 11 and Jones-Clark finished with 8 points. And despite a disappointing end to their season, all four of those players will be back again next year to make another run.
Van Dyke and Jaris, two juniors who will be back for OT next season, shared team high honors with 16 points apiece, Radetsky, a freshman, added 9 off the bench and Zavardino and Sam Sinatra, another junior, each had 7. Tobia finished with a lone free throw, but had a game-high seven assists for Old Tappan, which improved to 23-5 on the season.
“We’ve had a lot of tough losses in the past and I am just impressed with these kids’ resiliency during the year,” said Dunn, who team will take on North 2 champion South Plainfield in the Group 3 State semifinals on Wednesday at Ramapo High School. “To be able to come back and practice tomorrow is just a tribute to how far they have come during the course of the season. They set high expectations for themselves and they were able to meet them.”
Is this the best team that Dunn has coached in his eight years at OT?
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Collector's
Print of the Section Final! |
“They are the only state champions we’ve had,” said Dunn without actually wanting to say it.
They are also a refreshing group in another aspect. While the pressure and pace of the state tournament can be all consuming, it is still just high school basketball and Jaris, for one, seems to have a grasp of the bigger picture.
“We are so excited, we’ve never been playing basketball this late in March,” said Jaris, who proceeded to put the student back in student-athlete. “We have HESPA testing this week and we will take the tests in the morning, but know that we have basketball in the afternoon and we are so excited for it.”
FOR MORE PHOTOS OF THIS EVENT OR TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT OF THIS STORY, PLEASE VISIT 4FeetGrafix.com.
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