Tuesday,
January 14, 2014
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Lanie Shalek scored a game-high 20 points for Tenafly, which got back to .500 on the season with a 44-41 win at Old Tappan on Monday. |
OLD TAPPAN – If the Tenafly girls basketball team goes on to make the field for the Bergen County Tournament, it might be able to look back at Monday afternoon's game on the road at Northern Valley/Old Tappan as the one that got it there. The Tigers came in a game under .500 without having scored more than 40 points in a game this season, but needing wins anywhere they can find them to put themselves in a similar position to last year when they upset Paramus Catholic in the opening round of the county tournament.
With five seniors in the six-player rotation that head coach Jeff Koehler used on Monday, Tenafly has that sense of urgency that comes with making a last run with a tight-knit group that has been together for a long time.
“Our schedule for the past week has been hard and we could all feel it. We were pretty tired, but we knew we needed to win here today if we wanted to have a chance to qualify for the counties,” said Samantha Henderson, Tenafly's senior guard. “We had to push through the fatigue and do everything we could to get this win.”
Neither team had larger than a six-point lead in the game and neither team had more than a four points in the second half. There were also three ties in the fourth quarter, but Lanie Shalek's free throw with 6:10 to play in the game gave Tenafly the lead for good and Henderson's two made free throws with five seconds left added the final margin in a 44-41 win that gets Tenafly back to 4-4 on the season.
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Despite a defense designed to stop her, Old Tappan sophomore Ariana Chipolone shared team-high honors with 10 points. |
“Old Tappan is a great program and we knew this was not going to be easy. It was a gutty performance and I am so glad that we were able to pull it out because we needed this if we were even going to thing about making the counties,” said Koehler. “This was the most points we scored all year and we needed all of them.”
While Tenafly is chock full of experienced players, Old Tappan is on the other end of the spectrum as it took the floor with four sophomores in the starting lineup. The edge in minutes played showed up in the first half when Tenafly had to look elsewhere than the usual places for its scoring. With Henderson slowed by foul trouble and held without a point in the first half, the slack was taken up by Lanie Shalek, who scored 9 of Tenafly's 11 first quarter points and 11 of its 17 in the first half, which ended with the Tigers ahead by 17-15.
Old Tappan responded by scoring the first six points of the second half. Emily Sullivan made two tree throws to tied the game, Kaitlyn Seitsma scored inside to give the Golden Knights their first lead of the game at 19-17 and Arianna Chipilone's two free throws open up their biggest lead of the game at four points 1:41 into the second half.
“We started off slow, but we finished the first half well and took that lead early in the third quarter. The problem was we just couldn't keep them off the foul line,” said Old Tappan head coach Brian Dunn. “Our effort was there and it wasn't a turnover issue, I thought we took care of the ball, but we just committed too many fouls and we did not play smart in certain situations.”
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Tenafly senior Samantha Henderson scored all of her 14 points after halftime and 11 in the fourth quarter. |
With her team facing its largest deficit of the game, Shalek drove the lane and finished off both a layup and the conventional 3-point play that her team back to within a point at 21-20 and there was no more than a one possession difference either way before the third quarter ended in a 25-all deadlock. There were ties at 27 and 29 in the fourth quarter before Shalek made the front end of a one-and-one to give her team the lead for good at 30-29 with 6:10 to play.
Tenafly's defense, which took a host of different forms over the course of the game, was always titled toward controlling point guard Emily Crevani and Chipolone, Old Tappan's talented wing player who can shoot it from the outside and get to the basket. The Knights needed other players to step up to stay in it and Emily Sullivan did that. She scored 7 of her 9 points in the fourth quarter two of them on a jumper from the elbow with 35 seconds left that got OT to within 40-38.
After an errant Tenafly in-bounds pass, Crevani made a free throw to draw Old Tappan to within 1 point with 31 second left, but Shalek (20 points) and Henderson, who scored all 14 of her points in the second half and 11 in the fourth quarter, were a combined 4 of 4 from the charity stripe inside the final 20 seconds to keep the Knights at arm's length. Tenafly was a combined 21 of 28 from the free throw line in the game, Shalek was 10-for-13 and Henderson was 8 of 10 from the line and 6 of 6 in the fourth quarter. Shalek and Henderson accounted 34 of the Tigers' 44 total points.
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Kaitlyn Seitsma, one of OT's four sophomore starters, finished with 10 points. |
“We have been playing together since third grade so we kind of know when to pick each other up. Sam [Henderson] had a tough first half with fouls and playing against a good defense, so I just felt like I had to step it up until she got going and I knew she would,” said Shalek. “We both know that getting free throws is so important to the way we play. We drive a lot, we try to draw fouls and if you do that you have to be able to make them. Today we did and that was what really helped us win this game.”
Casey Burdy, a freshman and the lone underclassmen in Tenafly's rotation, finished with 4 points and Janae Mayo and Abby Golodik split the Tigers' other four points.
“The county tournament is always the goal and that is always in the discussion for us. We know that if we get in that anything can happen as we saw last year with Paramus Catholic,” said Koehler. “I'd at least like to see this team, with so many seniors that have done so much for our program, at least get the chance to do something like that again.”
Seitsma and Chipolone each finished with 10 points to lead Old Tappan (3-6) followed closely by the 9 from Sullivan. Crevani had 6 points, and Jessica Gattoni and Kelsey McLaughlin each had 3 for the Knights, who will still have county tournament aspirations of their own. If strength of schedule alone determined the seeds, Old Tappan would be a Top 5 as it has yet to play any opponent remotely resembling a cupcake through the season's first three-plus weeks.
“We play again tomorrow, so we just have to turn the page and keep going. We'll get together at lunchtime and go over some things and try to get everybody refocused,” said Dunn. “It's tough to lose a close game like this and bounce right back, but that is part of the deal. You have to learn from it and just keep working to get better.”
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