Monday, January 30, 2012

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Richy Espinal scored a game-high 18 points for Ridgefield Park, which won its ninth straight game, 61-48, over Rutherford in the opening round of the Bergen County Jamboree.

OLD TAPPAN – If there was one team that stuck out as under seeded in this year's Bergen County Jamboree, it was Ridgefield Park, which had not lost a game in exactly a month coming into Saturday's first round game. The Scarlets had won eight straight games, had beaten a couple of teams seeded ahead of them and were relegated to the No. 15 and the play-in round even with their quality resume. But once the ball is thrown up, seeds mean about as much as campaign promises and having seen a once 13-point lead cut to two heading into the fourth quarter, Ridgefield Park wasn't so much worried about the number next to its name as it was about Rutherford, which was riding a six-game winning streak of its own.

How would the Scarlets respond? They scored on seven of their first eight possessions of the fourth and turned a two-point lead into a 12-point spread in just over four minutes on the way to a 61-48 win and a date with second-seeded Don Bosco Prep in the Round of 16 next weekend.

“I had four seniors on the floor there at the end of the game and this was a big opportunity for their class to be remembered as a senior class that won a Jamboree game,” said Ridgefield Park head coach Chris Gaskin. “They just did everything right: triple-threat, rip-through, found the open man...I was just really pleased with the overall fundamentals and skill set that they showed in the fourth quarter.”

Kevin McGorry scored 10 points in the first quarter to get Rutherford off to a fast start.

One of the key reasons that Ridgefield Park now stands at 12-2, why it has won nine straight games and why it pulled away from Rutherford is Stevie Owens, the senior point guard. He played the fourth quarter without committing a turnover, he assisted on Sean Borkowski's fast break basket to kick off the game-deciding 13-3 run, he hit a pull-up jumper in the midst of it and when Rutherford was forced to go for broke defensively, Owens handled the added pressure flawlessly while piloting his team through the spread offense.

When Owens dribbled through the defense at the end of a long possession and then assisted on Corey Buljeta's conventional three-point play, Ridgefield Park had a 54-42 lead and there was no drama left to be had over the final 3:27.

“Coach [Gaskin] informed us that Rutherford was a fast paced team, but we could keep pushing them and eventually they would eventually tire out,” said Owens. “I think that our guys work hard enough in practice and we run a lot of extra sprints and that would make us fresher at the end after going all out for the first three quarters.”

That's what happened as Rutherford came out flying in the opening period but had trouble sustaining it. The Bulldogs dominated the first seven minutes of the game as Kevin McGorry made got three tough shots to fall in the first four minutes and his baseline finish with 1:12 to go in the first quarter gave the No. 18 seed the game's first double-digit lead at 16-5 with Gaskin having already burned through two timeouts.

Stevie Owens scored 12 points and played the point nearly flawlessly for Ridgefield Park.

Rutherford led 18-9 after the first quarter, but Ridgefield Park started to reel them in in the second. Richy Espinal turned back-to-back steals into five quick points, Buljeta put back his own missed shot and Espinal then added a three-pointer from the wing to cap a 10-0 run that lasted 2:09 and gave Ridgefield Park the lead at 19-18.

Espinal scored 10 of his game-high 18 points in the second quarter and his driving layup closed the first half scoring with Ridgefield Park taking a 27-26 lead into the locker room. After losing Nelson Mendez and Ahmed Gamea to graduation after last season, Espinal, the smooth-shooting, left-handed junior, has taken on the role as RP's go-to shooter and has run with it.

“At the beginning of this season I knew I was going to be able to help this team, but I have kind of passed even my own expectations. I, just like everyone else on this team, is going to stay hungry. We still have a lot more we want to do,” said Espinal. “Honestly, we had so much motivation for this game. When we got seeded 15th, we used that as motivation. We had a chip on our shoulders. The morning we found out that we were 15th, we wanted to go out and play that morning because we felt like we should have been higher and today was our chance to prove it.”

When Espinal made another steal and went in uncontested with 2:39 left in the third quarter to put the Scarlets up 41-28, it looked like it would be smooth sailing, but Rutherford had one run left in it. They closed the quarter with a 9-0 spurt that included a Brian Willis three-pointer and was helped along by a technical foul called against RP's Joe Haines. Willis made the accompanying two free throws and Darien Pannella turned the bonus possession into a pull up jumper that got the Bulldogs to within 41-39 heading into the fourth quarter. But then Ridgefield Park pulled away with the 13-3 run to start the fourth and reasserted itself.

Darien Pannella finished with 14 points for Rutherford, which fell to 9-5 on the season.

“We got it down to two there and we were right in it, but then I don't think the kind of shots that we needed to early in the fourth quarter and they made, it seemed like, all of theirs. I thought we settled a little bit when we should have been a little more patient,” said Rutherford head coach Ken Cavanagh. “We won two big games at the cutoff just to get into the tournament, at Manchester and then against Pompton Lakes, and that was one of our goals at the beginning of the season, to get to the Jambo. Another goal was to win some games here, but for us it has been a matter of consistency all season. Sometimes we look like no one could beat us and other times we beat ourselves when we don't take care of the basketball and we give up second shots.”

McGorry (17 points), Pannella (14 points) and Willis (13 points) combined to score all but four of Rutherford's total and the Bulldogs fell to 9-5 on the season. Ridgefield Park was more balanced as it had four of its five starters – Espinal (18 points), Buljeta (15 points), Owens (12 points) and Haines (11 points) – finish in double digits and Steven Soriano (3 points) and Borkowski (2 points) provided late offensive help as all of their combined points came in the fourth quarter.

For as well as it played on Sunday, Ridgefield Park will have to be even better next week as it takes a shot at Don Bosco Prep, the No. 2 seed and a finalist last season. But the Scarlets are not consumed with getting ready for Bosco as they are making a run at the Big North American Division title and looking for another deep run in the states where they reached the North 2, Group 2 state section final last year.

“More than anything, this game today helps us with seeding for the state tournament. Next Saturday is the cutoff for the states, we have two more important games this week and we don't want to let down against anybody,” said Gaskin. “We are going game by game, rebound by rebound, turnover by turnover and hopefully we will continue to get better every day.”

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