Sunday,
February 7, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Joseph Carroll hit 3-pointers on consecutive third quarter possessions to turn the game in favor of Ramsey, which reached the Jambo quarterfinals for the first time in a long time if not ever with a 44-36 win over St. Mary on Saturday. |
ALLENDALE – If you are looking for a story about the Glory Days of Ramsey High School boys basketball, you have come to the right place. With a late surge and a 44-36 win over St. Mary at Northern Highlands High School on Saturday, Ramsey is heading to quarterfinal round the Bergen County Jamboree for the first time anyone in the gym could remember and quite possibly for the first time ever.
“I have no idea if it has ever happened before, but I don’t think so. This team has had a lot of goals over the last two seasons, they have achieved most of them and they just keep going,” said Ramsey head coach Kevin McGuire. “I get emotional just thinking about it, because next year I am going to lose some seniors, but they are not going yet and we have more to do.”
The genesis of this Golden Age of Ramsey hoops goes back only two years. That was when Jack Gaffney transferred back after a two-year stint at Bergen Catholic and Joseph Carroll did the same after testing the waters at Don Bosco Prep. Those guys joined the tough-as-nails Mike Cirilli, a four-year starter at the point and Sean Kopczynski, a 6-foot-7 post player and off they went. Ramsey made the Round of 16 in the Jambo last year, gave Teaneck a scare and carried it over into the state tournament where it reached the North 1, Group 2 state sectional final before being tipped at the finish by Manchester.
Trying to take one step further in the Jambo this time around Ramsey was locked in a defensive struggle with St. Mary in exactly the kind of game where senior leadership is imperative. Neither team had more than a 6-point lead in the first half, which ended with St. Mary riding the wave. Justin Dykstra came off the bench to stroke two 3-pointers in the final 1:36 of the second quarter to give the Gaels, the No. 11 seed, a 24-22 lead at the break.
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Tim Klarmann scored a team-high 18 points including all of St. Mary's 12 in the second half. |
Points were hard to come by for both sides and it got tougher for St. Mary as it started to lose players. Naseer Walker did not play after the first quarter, Amir Hicks battled cramps throughout the game and 6-foot-6 sophomore center Marc Dadika left the game late in the third quarter with a shoulder injury and did not return. Tim Klarmann, the senior point guard, was the only Gael to score in the second half and, for a while at least, it looked like it might be enough.
Klarmann made the only two field goals for either team in the first 5:16 of the third quarter and his 3-pointer with 2:44 to go in the period put St. Mary up 29-23. Carroll responded with a 3-pointer from the wing. Klarmann scored again on a drive and Carroll immediately answered with another triple, this time from the opposite wing. Those two 3-pointers on consecutive possessions tipped the balance in Ramsey’s favor for good.
“I felt like in the third quarter we were starting to separate and then the kid Carroll, give him credit, he is an all-county type player, hits back-to-back 3s and I just felt that at that point the momentum started to shift,” said St. Mary head coach Brian Gaccione. “Klarmann made a couple of shots that got us up 6 and then 5, and the kid Carroll answered both times. If he misses those 3s, you never know. It might have been a different game.”
If the opposing coach pointed it out, it was obviously a key sequence and Carroll knew it was time to make something happen.
“They were pressuring me full court pretty much the whole game, so I knew if I could kind of get a running start, get ahead of them and stop real fast, they would just kind of go by me,” said Carroll. “That is what happened. Those were open looks and I just had to knock them down.”
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Sean Kopczynski (10 points) was one of three double-digit scorers for Ramsey, which will play Teaneck next weekend in the Jambo quarterfinals. |
Klarmann was not done, however, as he mounted St. Mary’s last stand by going coast-to-coast for a layup that turned into a 3-point play to restore the Gaels’ six-point lead at 34-28 inside the final minute of the third. But Carroll hit a free throw, Kopczynski added two more to slice the Rams’ deficit in half heading into the fourth quarter.
The next senior up for Ramsey was Cirilli, who invited contact on the baseline, invited it again and then scored to open the final period. Christian Tesoriero then came through with a layup off a feed from Cirilli to cap a 7-0 spurt and give Ramsey a 34-33 lead. Klarmann gave his team the lead back one last time with a jumper from the elbow with 6:12 remaining, but the Rams closed the game out with a 9-0 run starting with Kopyczynski’s clean up under the boards to make it to the Rothman Center at Fairleigh Dickinson University where they will No. 3 Teaneck, the same team that knocked them out of last year’s Jambo.
Carroll (19 points), Cirilli (11 points) and Kopczynski (10 points) all finished in double figures for Ramsey, which improved to 18-1 on the season. Klarmann had 18 to pace the Gaels, who fell to 17-3.
“This was big to get over the hump and to get to FDU next week. Now we’ll see what happens there,” said Gaffney. “It’s great because once me and Joey [Carroll] came back we knew we wanted to do something big. We are going for championships this year. Nothing less.”
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