Friday, February 8, 2008

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Robin Rebustillo was one of three New Milford starters to finish in double figures as the Knights improved to 14-6 on the season with a 59-49 win over Bogota on Thursday night.

NEW MILFORD -- The New Milford boys basketball team is in kind of a no-man's land at this point in the season. The Knights did not qualify for the Bergen County Jamboree, they started the second half of the BCSL-Olympic Division schedule in fifth place, well behind first place Park Ridge, and the state tournament is not scheduled to get underway for just about another three weeks.

So what is New Milford doing in the meantime? The Knights are winning games.

With balanced scoring in a 59-49 win over Bogota on Tuesday night New Milford won its fifth straight game and improved to 14-6 on the season.

“We’ve been playing our best basketball the last two weeks and hopefully it continues,” said New Milford head coach Mike Mayer. “We are working together and finding ways to win. We’ve won our first four league games here in the second half, so we are moving up. I don’t know if we have a chance at a championship, but we are just going to keep winning league games. That is what it comes down to.”

Bryan Antrom scored a game-high 25 points, including all 12 that Bogota scored in the third quarter.

New Milford took the lead for good when Pat Mitchell hit a pull jumper with 1:38 to go in the first quarter, but Knights could never afford to feel comfortable against Bogota, especially with as well as Bryan Antrom was creating shots for himself and his teammates.

Every time New Milford seemed to pull away, Antrom would pull his team back in the game. A conventional three-point play and a three-pointer from the corner by Robin Rebustillo and a steal and coast-to-coast layup by Eric Tannenbaum, all in the span of 46 seconds early in the second quarter gave New Milford a 22-13 lead.

But a 9-3 Bogota run with seven of those points coming from Antrom, got the Bucs back to within 25-22 before Jeremy Clark’s three-pointer gave New Milford the 28-22 lead it took into halftime.

The get-close-then-lose-ground flow became a recurring theme in the game for Bogota, which was without head coach Jay Mahoney who was serving the second game of a two-game suspension. The Bucs beat Cresskill in Cresskill on Tuesday night with assistant coach Mike Searles at the helm, but couldn’t find the consistency to pull the same trick in New Milford.

New Milford point guard Pat Mitchell scored 12 points, including two first quarter three-pointers that put his team ahead for good.

“It was tough because we just couldn’t get over that five-point hump. We kept getting close, but New Milford is a tough team and they would just seem to come down and hit a shot that stopped up in our tracks,” said Searles, a 2003 Bogota graduate who played under Mahoney and led the Bucs to the upset of Cresskill earlier in the week. “It’s tough not having coach here just because he has taught us all so much and because of his intensity and his knowledge of the game.”

One of Bogota’s best opportunities to wrest back the lead came midway through the third quarter and right after Matt Norton scored inside to give New Milford a 34-26 lead. Antrom made a layup and a free throw and then a three-pointer as the Bucs drew to within 34-32.

But while that six-point spurt was key at the time, there was a price to pay for it. Between three-point trips, Antrom picked up his third foul and after the run, New Milford closed the third quarter with an 8-2 stretch that included two Tannenbaum three-pointers from nearly the same spot on the wing and the Knights rebuilt a 42-34 advantage heading into the final quarter.

“They were face-guarding Mike [Bonsignore] and we expected that because Bogota always comes out in some crazy kind of defense,” said Tannenbaum, who had three-pointers among his team-high 19 points. “We needed somebody to step up and luckily I was feeling it in the second half and I was able to come through for our team.”

Danny Brown scored 12 points for Bogota, which fell to 9-9 on the season.

Tannenbaum had a three-pointer and a three-point play on consecutive trips to give New Milford a 50-40 lead with 4:45 to play in the game. Bogota had it down to eight at 52-44 on a Dillon Rogers bucket with 3:44 to go, but the next time down the floor Antrom was called for his fifth foul and was forced to the bench for good with 3:28 to play in the game and that was that.

Antrom scored a game-high 25 points, including all 12 that Bogota scored in the third quarter, and added four assists. Brown scored 12 points for Bogota and Rogers and Mark Veras split the other 12 Bucs points. Veras scored all six of his points on two fourth quarter three-pointers.

The loss dropped Bogota to 9-9 on the season, but the Bucs are in the state tournament for the 27th straight season and they have the type of battle-tested players that could make some noise when the post season rolls around.

Bogota is the No. 11 seed in North 1, Group 1, but will play at No. 6 Cresskill in the opening round in the same gym in which they won just three days ago. With a storied basketball history, Bogota has proven numerous times that it is a dangerous as dangerous gets in big game.

Anyone remember last season’s playoff run when the Bucs scored 97 points to upset Wood-Ridge and then gave Elmwood Park all it could handle in a classic North 1, Group 1 state sectional semifinal?

Eric Tannenbaum finished with 19 points for New Milford, which improved to 14-6 on the season.

“We play when we know everything is on the line. When we know it is our last day if we lose, that is when we play our best,” said Brown, who was a part of Bogota’s 2006 state championship football team and a contributor on last year’s hoops team. “We have a game tomorrow, we have four games next week and we just have to get on a hot streak so going into the playoffs we can win those games.”

New Milford was led by Tannenbaum’s 19 points and he was joined in double figures by point guard Pat Mitchell (12 points) and Rebustillo (10 points). Norton finished with 8 points and Matt Brunelli added five off the bench.

So from here on out is just a matter of not fixing what ain’t broken for New Milford and its hopes to make a deep foray into the state tournament. The Knights are seeded ninth and will play No. 8 Leonia in the opening round in Leonia. The teams split their two regular season meetings in the BCSL-Olympic Division.

“It’s going to be a grudge match. They beat us the first time we played them and they beat us the second time. It’s good that we are playing them again because we know what we are up against,” said Mitchell, whose team scored 90 points in it regular season win over Leonia. “We are playing our best basketball right now. We are all together as a team and we are finishing games.”

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