Wednesday,
January 6, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Ja'Quaye James scored 29 points in the first half and a career-high 42 in the game as Teaneck beat NV/Old Tappan, 55-42, on Tuesday night. |
OLD TAPPAN – As Teaneck seeks to regain what it lost last season after a brilliant four-year run of Bergen County Jamboree and state sectional championships, it is going to have those nights when its offense is balanced and a least two and maybe more players reach double figures in scoring, It is going to have those nights when a secondary ball-handler is going to be needed to allow sophomore Ja’Quaye James to run off screens in order to get himself open.
Tuesday was not one of those nights.
Tuesday was the night when James put on an offensive clinic in which he needed little help other than having a teammate throw the ball in-bounds to get it in his hands.
With a variety of 3-pointers in transition, 3-pointers off the dribble, pull-up jumpers from just inside the arc and the occasion drive to keep the defense honest, James scored 29 first half points, seven more than Teaneck’s opponent did in the second half, and he finished with 42 points, a career-high and the sum total for Old Tappan as Teaneck improved to 6-1 with a 55-42 victory on the road.
It’s hard to remember a North Jersey high school basketball player being as dominant offensively as James was on Tuesday, especially in the first half. He hit three first quarter 3-pointers, he made four in the second quarter and, on the five field goals made by Teaneck’s other players in the game, James assisted on three of them. James scored only two points in the third quarter meaning that 40 of his 42 came in a span of just over 23 minutes.
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Junior Justin Minaya scored a team-high 19 points for Old Tappan. |
He was smooth, he was dominant and there was little Old Tappan’s defense could have done differently.
“Our guys did a good job keeping him front. He hit some ridiculous shots that were all contested deep 3s,” said Old Tappan head coach Craig Ferraro. “You have to give the kid credit. When a kid scores 29 points in a half…he was unconscious.”
Most of all, James, who is the lone returning backcourt starter for the Highwaymen after last year’s running mate Leondre Washington defected to Roselle Catholic, was motivated.
“That is what happens when you tick me off. I was just going to come out and be aggressive, but on the very first play one of their players bumped me, hit me in the chin. I didn’t complain to the ref, I just said to myself that kid just earned himself a good game,” said James, whose previous career-high was 36. “He was going to get one anyway, but I got 29 in the first half and finished with 42.”
James scored 13 of his team’s 15 points in the first quarter, but Old Tappan actually finished the quarter in front as a late 7-0 run gave the Knights a 16-15 edge after eight minutes. James opened the second period with a pull-up 3 to give Teaneck the lead back and that bucket kicked off a 19-3 run that ended with another James 3 off the dribble to make it a near blow out. Teaneck led 35-18 with 2:36 left in the first half before Lucas Casamento set up a Chris Baker basket and scored one of his own as Old Tappan got back to within 35-22 at the break, which was needed to total up James’ first half points haul.
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Juwuan Daniels scored 9 points for Teaneck, including a key fourth quarter 3-pointer. |
“I saw Joel [Hernandez] put in 50 points a few years ago for us, but that wasn’t in this kind of game. This was a game against a good team on the road and that was the most valiant performance that I have seen in my time here,” said Teaneck head coach Jerome Smart. “[James] outscored their whole team in the first half and the scored the same amount as their whole team when it was all over. I’ve never seen that. That was a great performance. I don’t even know what else you can say.”
But while James won the first half by himself, he had not yet won the game against an Old Tappan team that did not devolve in the role of spectator. The Knights outscored Teaneck 11-4 in the third quarter to get back to within 39-33 and opened the fourth quarter with a 7-2 run. Justin Minaya, a potential first-team All-County type player himself, finished off a conventional 3-point play and Casamento made both ends of a one-and-one to make it a one-point game at 41-40 with 5:45 still to play.
With the way the game was going, it figured that James would head to the other end and take the shot that would restore order, but instead he kicked it to the corner where junior Jawuan Daniels was all alone. For all that James did to lead his team; it might have been Daniels’ triple that actually turned the game in Teaneck’s favor for good.
“We were only up by one in that situation and they were on a little bit of a run. I just felt like my next shot was going to go in and we needed it. It went in and I was happy,” said Daniels, a junior and one of three new starters in the Teaneck lineup. “I feel the pressure of trying to live up to the way they do things here, of playing for Teaneck and the expectations, but I love it.”
The Highwaymen went on to outscore Old Tappan 14-2 over the final 5:20 to make it six wins in seven tries this season. It’s a good start for a team that lost Washington, a two-year starter at point guard, to the non-public carousel and is still trying to figure out its identity.
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Point guard Lucas Casamento scored 9 points for Old Tappan, which fell to 4-2 on the season. |
“We are still trying to win a league title, a county title and in the state tournament. We have some size this year, some good depth and hopefully that will help us out, but our guards are up and down outside of Ja’Quaye. I am used to having three of four quality guards that I could put on the floor and right now we have two. The other guys are not bad, but they need time to up their level of play,” said Smart. “We have the three guys back from last year [James, Nick Whitaker and Geani Bannerman] who played a lot and everybody else is up for JV. So we have to work these guys in and try to find that consistency.”
Totaling up Teaneck’s points was easy as behind James’ 42, Daniels had 9, Korey Pettie made a field goal and Whitaker and Jahlil Kure each made a free throw.
Old Tappan was led by Minaya, the junior wing who finished with 19 points. Casamento added 9, Chris Baker had 7, Kevin Eifert added 6 and Erik Slater made a free throw for the Knights, who fell to 4-2 on the season.
“We are close. We have a lot of things to fix, but that is the encouraging part. We are competing, we are playing well for stretches, but we have things that we can correct to get us playing up to our potential,” said Ferraro. “If we can focus on fixing some of those things in practice, we can be pretty good.”
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