Sunday, February 1, 2015

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Shant Karajelian had four 3-pointers and was the constant in a game of sluggish offense as Cliffside Park pulled the upset of St. Mary, 45-29, in the opening round of the Jambo.

OLD TAPPAN – Despite the fact that the Bergen County Jamboree did not officially begin until Sunday, Cliffside Park has been playing Jambo games for most of the month of January. With each win or each loss over the last couple of weeks there was new math to be done to recalculate the Red Raiders' chances of getting to the .650 winning percentage needed for automatic entry. There were some nail-biting moments to be sure as snow wiped out a game on Monday, did the same to a hastily arranged game on Tuesday and they trailed by a point heading into the final quarter of a win-or-go-home game on Wednesday against Lodi.

By claiming a spot so late, Cliffside was a first round underdog with the No. 20 for a seed, but the Red Raiders showed no nerves, especially on the defensive end against a misfiring St. Mary team on the way to a 45-29 upset victory over the No. 13 seed. Cliffside held the Gaels to just 12 of 44 shooting from the field, which meant that just about every Red Raider bucket extended its lead and it steadily grew through the second half.

Both teams slogged through the first half with just 10 made field goals combined, but three of those were Cliffside Park 3-pointers, two by senior Shant Karajelian and one by junior point guard Julian Guzman and those three shots provided the bonus points that allowed the Red Raiders to take a 14-11 halftime lead.

“I was nervous going into the second half because we didn't hit shots and they didn't hit shots in [in the first half] either and I thought that they were an athletic team that could have worn us down,” said Cliffside Park head coach Sean MacIsaac. “So really our whole halftime was geared toward 16 minutes to play, give us everything you have, handle the pressure because you have been there before.”

Amir Hicks scored 6 points for St. Mary, which suffered its third loss of the season.

Karajelian hit a 3 for the first points of the third quarter to kick off a 7-2 run that pushed the Cliffside lead to eight points and his second 3-pointer of the period gave the Raiders a 24-15 lead. Karajelian outscored St. Mary by himself in the third quarter, 8-6, and through 24 minutes of the game he had 14 points to just 17 total for the Gaels, who entered the fourth quarter trailing 29-17.

“I just spotted up. My teammates got me open and my role on the team is to shoot, so I just got to a spot and they got me the ball like they have been doing all season,” said Karajelian, who made four of CP's five 3-pointers in the game. “We've played a lot of hard games and a lot of important games in the last couple weeks, so we are kind of used to it and we knew that today the focus had to be on our defense. We held them and we were able to keep building the lead.”

St. Mary is playing without its top scorer, Dino Bradarich, who was lost to a knee injury in early January, but the Gaels have pieced together a solid since and only had two losses coming in. It figured that they would find their offensive stride somewhere on Sunday, but sustained effectiveness in the scoring half never materialized.

After Jafet Lamouth scored on a cut to the basket off an assists from Marquis Wright to put Cliffside up 31-19 with 6:25 left in the game, Tim Klarmann finally got St. Mary's first 3-pointer to fall to cut the lead to 9. The Gaels were still within single digits at 33-24 after Naseer Walker scored in the paint, but Gabriel Valerio, who scored 14 of his game-high 16 points in the second half, scored off an assist from Lamouth with 4:05 to go and St. Mary could get no closer than that 11-point deficit the rest of the way.

Gabriel Valerio scored a game-high 16 points for Cliffside, which will face No. 4 Ramapo next weekend.

Klarmann, who scored a game-high 9 points, made three field goals, Amir Hicks (6 points) made two, but no other Gael had more than one made basket. The struggle continued at the free throw line where St. Mary was just 2 of 7 as a team.

Valerio, Karajelian (14 points) and Guzman (10 points) all finished in double figures for Cliffside, which was a combined 8 of 12 from the free throw line. Lamouth had the other 6 points for the Red Raiders, who will get a shot as No. 4 Ramapo in next weekend's Round of 16. That game is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at Northern Highlands High School.

“When I coached with Joe Finizio [at Tenafly] he would always talk about how hard it is to win basketball games. He talked about early on with his program how he just had to stay the course and continue to develop and I was able to learn a lot from him about the process of becoming a competitive program,” said MacIsaac. “First it was hard to win games. Now we are winning games and what's the next step? Getting into the counties and we got there last year. Next was getting there and winning a game and we just did that. It's a hard thing to do and we are still kind of going down the path of building on our latest accomplishment and now we have a new one to build on. I am happy for this group, a really coachable group of kids.”

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