Wednesday,
January 20, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Ashley Sullivan grabbed an offensive rebound late to help Northern Valley/Old Tappan hold off Ramapo,
42-40, on Tuesday afternoon. |
OLD TAPPAN – In game between two established teams with All-County caliber players running around all over the place, inevitably there will come a time when one of the supporting cast will get the opportunity to affect the outcome of the game. Northern Valley/Old Tappan was shooting a second free throw with 16 seconds left while trying to close out the game against Ramapo.
Up two with a chance to make it a full one-possession game, the shot was short and hit the rim at the front left corner. That was when Ashley Sullivan, whose job it is to do the dirty work under the basket, saw her chance. She got her hands on the rebound, kicked it out and simultaneously gave her team two more chances on the free throw line while denying Ramapo a possession on which it could have tied the game as the clock wound down.
“I was just kind of following directions. Coach [Brian Dunn] told me to go get a rebound and that is what I did,” said Sullivan, a senior whose minutes have increased with the season-ending injury to Alexie Piccinich. “My favorite part of the game is the tough stuff like going for loose balls or trying to grab a rebound. Those are the things I like to do.”
Sullivan’s rebound was one of two hustle plays that Old Tappan made in the last 15 seconds to hold off the rival that it beat in last season’s North 1, Group 3 state sectional final. Emily Crevani made a steal at halfcourt as Ramapo pushed the ball up the floor for the last time. And even though the Golden Knights went 1 of 4 from the free throw stripe in the final stages, they did just enough to hold on for a 42-40 win, another resume stuffer on the day before the Bergen County Girls Basketball Tournament is to be seeded.
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Ramapo junior Emily Calabrese was brilliant on both ends of the floor and finished with a game-high 17 points. |
“We gutted it out. I would like to have been a little bit cleaner at the end, but we did the things we needed to do to hold on,” said Dunn, whose team is now 10-2 on the season. “Ashley Sullivan had the huge rebound on the missed free throw to win us another possession and we did just enough against a very good team. We know Ramapo, we expected a tough game and that was what this was.”
Old Tappan came out flying behind Ariana Chipolone. The senior hit four of her first five shots in the first four minutes of the game. She got all the way to the basket to score the game’s first points and added a jumper from the corner, a short one along the baseline and one from the wing with her toes on the 3-point line to five the Knights an 8-1 lead.
Ramapo did not make its first field goal until Olivia Kraebel came off the bench and knocked down a 3-pointer 5:22 in, but the Green Raiders weathered the early storm and drew even at 9-9 on two straight buckets from senior Reilly White.
Old Tappan closed the back-and-forth opening quarter the final run, a 6-0 run capped by a crafty move by Crevani, its senior point guard. With time winding down, she called for a pick to come and help her at the top of the key, but as the defense shifted to greet the screener, Crevani pulled the trigger on the 3-pointer that gave the Knights a 15-9 lead.
Kraebel hit another 3 to open the second quarter and the Raiders got even at 15, but Chipolone’s slicing drive gave Old Tappan the lead back and it maintained it for the rest of the first half. The Knights led 27-23 at the break and that matched the largest lead for either team the rest of the way. Four straight points by Rosie Martin got Ramapo even at 29 and it took its first lead of the game on Karlie Brogan’s turn-around jumper in the lane.
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Emily Crevani's late steal sealed the win for Old Tappan, which is now 10-2. |
Both teams are experienced, both have multiple offensive options and both went after mismatches. Ramapo used a variety of players to bring the ball up the floor to keep Old Tappan from forcing backcourt turnovers. Brogan, who scored the 1,000th point of her career last week, spent a lot of time in the paint while being guarded by Kelsey McLaughlin, Old Tappan’s best perimeter defender, and Emily Calabrese and White, two interior players, got to the wings and the corners to stretch the defense, Calabrese hit a short jumper from the baseline to give Ramapo a 33-32 lead after three quarters and hit a 3-pointer from the wing to open the fourth quarter to give the Raiders their largest lead of the game at 36-32.
“That is the versatility that we have and we do look for mismatches and that was a part of the plan coming in,” said Ramapo head coach Sandy Gordon. “Emily [Calabrese] did a great job on both ends of the floor. She faced up, hit some big shots for us, got some rebounds and that is what we need her to do for us night in and night out.”
But Old Tappan has answers of its own at the offensive end and Crevani worked a pick-and-roll with sophomore center Alex George and then cut through with a spin move to give the Knights the lead back at 37-36 with 4:44 to play. Crevani then broke the final tie of the game with a driving layup and another pick-and-roll with George, this one closer to the basket, led to another hoop that gave Old Tappan a 41-37 lead with 1;23 to play.
Calabrese’s jumper from the top of the key that kissed every piece of the rim before falling through made it a two-point game and Nikki Butler then came up with a steal that led to a Brogan free throw and a one point Ramapo deficit, 41-40, with 30 seconds left.
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Rosie Martin had six points for Ramapo, which fell to 11-2 on the season. |
Each team missed opportunities for that one play that cemented an advantage either way. Ramapo missed an open 3 with 21 seconds left and Old Tappan missed three of its four late free throws, but the little things like Sullivan’s rebound and Crevani’s steal added up in Old Tappan’s favor.
Calabrese (17 points) was Ramapo’s only double-digit scorer. Kraebel and Martin each added 6, White, who also had five blocked shots, scored all 5 of her points in the first quarter, Brogan finished with 4 and Butler had the other two points for the Green Raiders (11-2), who are on a two-game losing streak that is misleading. They might be playing their best basketball of the season right now.
Ramapo gave Red Bank Catholic, a Top 20 team in the state, all it could handle of the weekend and then fell by two points to the defending sectional champion on the road on Tuesday.
“It is not where you start but where you finish and I think as a team we are starting to figure it out,” said Gordon. “We played well for two-and-a-half quarters, maybe three quarters, on Sunday [against RBC] and we were good for three-and-a-half quarters today after a bad start. I think we are starting to come together.”
Old Tappan was led by their all senior backcourt of Crevani and Chipolone, who each finished with 15 points. George had 6, Sophie Downey made a second quarter 3-pointer, Kailyn Seitsma made a second quarter field goal and McLaughlin’s free throw rounded out the scoring for the Knights.
“We had a bad third quarter in terms of decision making but that was mostly because the kids were trying too hard to make plays,” said Dunn. “It looked sloppy and it probably was, but they were mistakes of effort and, as a coach, you have to let them play through that sometimes. It makes you better in the long run.”
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