Wednesday,
January 13, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Ariana Chipolone scored a game-high 23 points for NV/Old Tappan, which improved to 7-2 on the season with a
56-44 win over rival NV/Demarest. |
OLD TAPPAN – With the majority of its players back from last year’s team that reached the Group 3 state final and with most of them being seniors with extensive varsity experience, there is no tricking the Northern Valley/Old Tappan girls basketball team. No junk defense is going to confuse the Golden Knights, no funky traps or presses are going to fluster them and the man-to-man defensive fundamentals that are ingrained in them means the only way to beat Old Tappan is to outplay it in an old fashioned game of straight up basketball.
For proof, look no further than the scouting report put together by Northern Valley/Demarest head coach Jenny Jurjevic for Tuesday’s game between the sister schools rivals.
“They do such a good job of sticking to the basics. With them, less is more. [Head coach Brian Dunn] teaches hard-nose defense, a basic motion offense and they just stick to what they know. Because his kids know those basic principles they are tough to defend,” said Jurjevic. “There really isn’t anything to scout. Those kids come out and just play basketball. They flat out just play basketball.”
Old Tappan’s defense is a given. The Knights give up few, if any, points in transition, very little on the offensive glass and most shots against are well-contested. On the offensive end they have a variety of weapons capable of carrying the load for long stretches. On Tuesday afternoon it was Ariana Chipolone in the first half and Emily Crevani in the second as Old Tappan won its seventh game in nine tries this season with a 56-44 victory at home against Demarest.
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Senior Brianna Tarabocchia scored a team-high 18 points for NV/Demarest. |
Old Tappan does not have anything to prove this season. There is no pressure to prove doubters wrong. The returning state finalists have turned inward and have dedicated themselves to the grind of getting better day in and day out.
“They work hard and they want to win. They are competitive. They want to be coached and pushed and they want to do well, so they are an easy group of kids to work with,” said Dunn, just coming off a fall season where he coached the Old Tappan football team to its first state title since 1985. “They can handle pressure and tough situations and they like to go out and show what they can do. I get upset because I want them to look good doing it because I know how good they are.”
Chipolone was especially good on the offensive end in the first half. Demarest’s took its lone lead off the opening tip when MacKenzie Press took the ball straight in and scored four seconds in, but Chipolone hit a jumper from the corner on Old Tappan’s first possession of the game to tie it for the first and only time. Kailyn Seitsma’s step-in jumper gave Old Tappan the lead for good at 4-2. Chipolone scored 7 of the final nine points of the first quarter, a personal 7-2 run that gave the Knights a 15-9 advantage after eight minutes.
Demarest played its host to a second quarter stalemate as it found alternate ways to score. With Kelsey McLaughlin, the Old Tappan defender who always draws the toughest assignment, locked on Press, who does a majority of the ball-handling, Jurjevic switched off and let the offense run through Brianna Tarabocchia. An inside player the last couple of years, the senior who will play at St. Peter’s University next year, has expanded her game to include the ability to facilitate and get to the basket off the dribble. Tarabocchia finished a conventional 3-point play in the middle of an 11-2 run that got Demarest back in it.
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Kailyn Seitsma, part of Old Tappan's deep and talented senior class, finished with 7 points. |
Victoria Corcoran’s 3-point play and a 3 from the wing by Press had Demarest as close as 24-23 with 1:45 left in the first half before Chipolone scored off an inbounds pass by McLaughlin and Emily Crevani drained a 3 from the wing as the buzzer sounded to make it a 29-23 Old Tappan lead at the break.
That late 3 got Crevani, the senior point guard who will play at Tampa University next season, going and the momentum carried right over in the third quarter when the Knights seized control for good. Crevani scored 12 of her 19 points in that third quarter in did it in all kinds of ways. She spun in the lane and finished with her left hand to make it 33-24, dropped a rainbow runner high off the glass to make it 35-27 and then hit two 3s and finished another drive in the final 1:22 of the quarter to stretch the OT lead to 45-27 heading into the fourth quarter. And that was it.
“I think we all realize that we play to the level that we train at and we are confident in our training and the work that we put in in practice. That is where it starts,” said Crevani, a four-year starter at the point and a part of a core group of seniors that includes Chipolone, the now injured Alexie Piccinich, McLaughlin, Seitsma, Ashley Sullivan and Maia Levenshus that have tons of varsity experience. “We trust each other and when we stay calm and play our game we are at our best. As long as we stay at our tempo and stay in control, we will win the game.”
Chipolone scored a game-high 23 and Crevani finished with 19. Seitsma scored all 7 of her points in the first half, McLaughlin and sophomore center Alex George each made field goals and Levenshus had the other point for the Old Tappan, whose only two losses on the season came against Albertus Magnus (NY) and Teaneck. With Teaneck’s loss to Pascack Valley on Thursday, the Knights are back in a tie for first place in the Big North National Division.
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Victoria Corcoran scored 9 points for Demarest, which is now 5-3 on the year. |
There is a long way to go, but through nine games Old Tappan is right where it was expected to be: squarely in the mix for league, county and state sectional title runs and, quite possibly, more.
“It only comes with experience, but now all of us are comfortable out there in our roles,” said McLaughlin. “We have been playing together at least for four years and sometimes more if we are from the same town. We know how each other play, we practice hard and we are just trying to stay consistent.”
Demarest is not that far off either as it also has a solid senior core. Tarabocchia (18 points) and the Corcoran twins, Victoria (9 points) and Veronica (7 points) combined for 36 of the 44 points. Press had the other 8 points for the Norsewomen, who are now 5-3 on the season.
“I have not slept one night since I took this job, or at least since the season started and that is the truth. We definitely have the toughest league around and every night there is a tough game,” said Jurjevic, a standout at Pascack Valley in her playing days, the former head coach at Emerson and in her first season at the head of Demarest’s bench. “We had two, maybe one-and-a-half bad quarters here today and that cost us, but we are capable of playing better and we will keep working at it.”
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