Thursday,
March 12, 2015
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Kelsey McLaughlin played lock-down defense and chipped in with 5 points for Old Tappan, which reached the state finals for the first time in program history with a 44-28 win over Nutley on Wednesday night. |
FRANKLIN LAKES – The state tournament builds in intensity as it rolls along. The opening rounds are played on home courts where there is usually an obvious favorite and maybe a few extra fans show up due to its designation as a playoff game. Win a couple and the crowd grows in multiples and by the time the postseason gets to the state sectional finals there are fan buses with every seat filled criss-crossing New Jersey highways and side streets.
For Old Tappan it was a modest beginning with its first couple of games played in its auxiliary gym and steadily building until it played in front of a capacity crowd on Monday night in Franklin Lakes when it won its first state sectional title since 2007 at Ramapo High School. The Golden Knights returned to the same venue on Wednesday for an encore that raised the stakes even further.
With a virtuoso defensive performance and a varied offensive attack, Old Tappan earned a trip to the state final for the first time in school history. By holding Nutley to just two second half field goals, Old Tappan built its slim one-point halftime advantage into a 44-28 victory that sends it on to the Pine Belt Arena, the largest of buildings in the state built to house scholastic athletics, on the campus of Toms River North High School. The Group 3 state final will be played on Sunday at a time yet to be determined against either Middletown South or Timber Creek.
“It's pretty crazy and I am speechless. I don't even know what to say because I don't know if I ever thought about this really happening,” said Alexie Piccinich, one of the five juniors in Old Tappan's starting lineup. “We wanted to win our state sectional and we did and then this was the next game and we didn't really have that much time to think about it. We are confident, we think we can do well in our next game, too, and just keep it going.”
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Nutley's Blair Watson, a junior and already a University of Maryland committ, scored a team high 14 points. |
The Knights were up against a Nutley team that was doing anything but thinking about the state final when it entered the tournament as a .500 team and a No. 13 seed in North 2, Group 3. The Raiders then beat the No. 4, 5, 1 and 2 seeds on the way to winning an improbable section title. Junior Blair Watson, who has already accepted an offer play at the University of Maryland and looks every bit the part, had 29 points and 16 rebounds in the final upset against Vorhees. Her obvious athleticism and a tricky triangle-and-2 defense set up to contain Ariana Chipolone and Emily Crevani led to a competitive first 16 minutes.
Old Tappan got into foul trouble as three starters picked up two first half personals and it needed three free throws from Kailyn Seitsma with 41 seconds left in the second quarter just to take a 17-16 halftime lead.
Adjustments were made in somewhat of a vociferous manner in the locker room.
“We had to get settled at halftime and I got a little agitated to get them to the spots they needed to be at. That is the problem with having only one day to prep with no day off in between,” said Old Tappan head coach Brian Dunn. “Once Alexie started to get into the right spots and Ashley [Sullivan] and Kelsey [McLaughlin] figured it out, then we got some easy looks.”
While all that was going one, Old Tappan never wavered from its defense first approach and got after it all game in its customary man-to-man. If ever unsure of who the opposition's best offensive player is, just pick out the one that McLaughlin is guarding right from the opening tap and the answer becomes clear. McLaughlin drew Watson this time around and held her without a second half field goal and to just 14 hard-earned points in the game.
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Old Tappan junior Ariana Chipolone gets a hug from Ashley Sullivan after scoring the 1,000th point of her career on a second quarter free throw. |
Watson's last field goal was a 3-pointer that tied the score at 11 with 5:35 left in the second quarter, but Nutley then went the next 6:58 without making another. Somehow the Raiders managed to stay in it and Carly Anderson's bucket off an inbounds play 1:37 into the third quarter had them within just a single point at 19-18.
But Chipolone, who scored the 1,000th point of her career on a second quarter free throw, made a basket that kicked off a 13-2 run that put Old Tappan up 32-20 after third quarter and basically turned the lights out.
“Looking back at it I think that our mindset, my players and myself included, might have been that we were satisfied just to get here and I you can't play a game like this with that type of mindset. We were off tonight,” said Nutley head coach Larry Mitschow, whose team captured its first state sectional title in 39 years with its win over Vorhees on Monday. “It's going to be a tough ride home, but once we get there and settle down and I go out for an orange soda, it will feel good. We finished 17-13, but we pulled off 8 straight [wins] just to get into the states and we won four in a row on the road in the states against four of the top five seeds in our bracket. It was a great run.”
Old Tappan is on a great run of its own and it had some time in the fourth quarter to enjoy it. Sytsma, for the second straight game, nailed a 3-pointer to open the final period and Piccinich cut to the basket to give the Knights a 17-point advantage at 37-20. In a class move, Mistschow decided not to extend the game with an endless free throw shooting contest, instead letting it play out at is natural pace.
Watson led Nutley with her 14 points and added 11 rebounds, but the Raiders had trouble finding secondary scorers. Anderson finished with 8 and Sydney Kunz had 6, all from the foul line. That was the sum of Nutley's offensive output.
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Carly Anderson and Nutley went from a .500 No. 13 seed to a section champ for the first time in 39 years. |
Sytsma led Old Tappan with her 14 points, Chipolone added 11, including her milestone 1,000th with still a full year left to play, and Piccinich had 10. McLaughlin, in addition to her yeomen's effort on the defensive end, scored 5 points, including a 3-pointer. Crevani made a field goal and so did Ashley Sullivan, who again provided quality minutes off the bench to help soothe the Knights' foul trouble.
It's a big deal to be heading to Toms River as one of only 12 teams left playing in the state and that fact was not lost on Dunn, normally stoic in postgame interviews...but not this time.
“It's hard to put into words because it's a long time that we put into this. This isn't just a couple of weeks, this isn't just a year of basketball. This is years...years. I have been with this group since they were in seventh grade and years beyond that with [assistant coaches] Bob [Silvestri] and Christine [Massaro]. It's legit,” said Dunn. “Our kids can handle anything. We have a little more time to develop and build some more character. Win or lose we are doing the things that we practice everyday, we are showing the type of attitude we want to have. The winning and losing takes care of itself. We'll just play and see what happens.”
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