Tuesday,
March 8, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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After starting every game for the last four years, Old Tappan point guard Emily Crevani had a slight disagreement with her coach about how to spend the final 7 seconds of the 45-33 win over Ramapo in the North 1, Group 3 final. |
OLD TAPPAN – By this time in the relationship between coach and point guard should just about seamless. Senior Emily Crevani has started every game that the Northern Valley/Old Tappan has played over the last four years, taking the floor at the opening jump every time since she entered high school. In in a career that is almost 120 varsity games long Crevani has played every one of them under head coach Brian Dunn.
You would think that these two would be on the same page by now. Right?
“She is (mad) at me right now and I am (mad) at her,” said Dunn. “We just had words.”
This one was the kind of argument that anyone involved in high school basketball would be thrilled to have because it came right after the Golden Knights became the first basketball team at the school, boys or girls, to win back-to-back state sectional championships and the first ever to win one in the home gym. For the second straight season, Old Tappan beat Ramapo in the North 1, Group 3 state sectional final and this time it was a 45-33 victory on Monday night, but it was those final seven seconds that were the cause of all the happy acrimony.
“This is the last game she was ever going to play here, she started every single game for four years and I wanted her to get her an ovation,” said Dunn. “She wanted to be on the floor so she could be the one to throw the ball up in the air. It is so typical of me and her.”
The two have butted heads so many times over those four years as competitors always will and that back-and-forth is what has produced the concrete bond between head coach and point guard. And the relationship has matured.
“I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what he was doing, but now I do,” said Crevani. “I am a senior now so I can accept it when he is right and he was right. I thought he was trying to ruin my moment, but he was really trying to give me my moment.”
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Emily Calabrese scored 11 points to lead Ramapo, which got as close as four points late in the fourth quarter. |
A lot has happened over the course of this season that could have made it go all wrong. With two senior starters – Alexie Piccinich and Ariana Chipolone – lost for the season to knee injuries, the Golden Knights had a couple of built in excuses for bowing out of the state tournament early. Instead, they are just one win away from getting back to where they were last season when, fully healthy, they made it all the way to the Group 3 state final in Toms River for the first time in school history.
How has Old Tappan managed to patch over the cracks? With its defense that just refuses to give up points in bunches. Each field goal against is a field goal earned and Ramapo could not manage enough of them. The Green Raiders, who were playing as well as any team in North Jersey coming in after scoring 60-plus points in wins over two quality postseason opponents – Northern Highlands and Pascack Valley – fell behind five seconds into the game when Kailyn Sytsma made a 3-pointer on the first possession of the night and Ramapo trailed for 31:09 of the 32 minutes.
Ramapo’s only lead of the game came late in the first period when Nikki Butler’s 3-pointer from the wing capped a 7-0 first quarter run to make it 9-8 before Crevani banked in a 3-point buzzer beater to give Old Tappan the lead back for good. Crevani’s bucket kicked off a 13-3 run that put the Knights in control. She made a steal and a layup with 1:34 left in the first half to finish the spurt with a 22-11 lead.
With the hard-nosed, on-the-ball defense that Old Tappan plays, a 10-point deficit is usually enough to bury an opponent, but Ramapo made it interested on more than a couple of occasions. Junior Emily Calabrese made two free throws to close the first half and then scored back-to-back field goals in the first minute of the third quarter to make it a 5-point game at 24-17.
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Kailyn Sytsma scored 10 points for Old Tappan, which will play Voorhees in Wednesday's Group 3 state semifinal. |
A Crevani layup and a Sytsma 3 pushed Old Tappan’s lead back to double digits at 29-19 and it was still a 10-point advantage, 33-23, at the end of the third quarter. But Ramapo, an experienced team with three seniors in its starting lineup, had a final rally in it and made a game of it.
The Raiders opened the fourth quarter with an 8-2 run. Calabrese scored on a drive before Ramapo called a quick time out and then returned to the floor to create a turnover. Butler made the steal and Rosie Martin provided the assist to Karlie Brogan, who scored inside to get the Raiders all the way back to within 35-31 with 2:36 to play and on they got the ball back again with a chance to really apply the pressure by making it a one-possession game.
“We fought, we made a run, we cut it to four and we had a 2-on-1. Then we missed a shot, we missed two shots on that possession,” said Ramapo head coach Sandy Gordon. “Every time we had them on their heels a little bit, they would come right back and hit us with a dagger.”
That final dagger came courtesy of Alex George, Old Tappan’s sophomore center who was rewarded for running the floor with a layup at the other end. Sytsma then hit a jumper from the corner with 1:30 left to push the lead back to eight, 39-31, and that was basically it.
All that was left was for Old Tappan to figure out how to best honor this senior class, which has been a part of two of the three state sectional championships that the girls basketball program has won. The original plan was to have just about the entire team from last year re-unite for this season’s run at a first-ever outright state championship. Although it has been altered by the injuries to Piccinich and Chipolone, the possibility is still there because of players like Maia Levenshus and Ashley Sullivan, to seniors with expanded roles in which they are now thriving.
Sullivan hit a key bucket to close the third quarter and Levenshus, a defensive specialist and a second quality ball-handler, finished with 6 points.
“Ever since my freshman year my job was to do little things like taking charges, getting on the floor [for loose balls]. I have kind of been keeping track and while everyone talks about the 1,000-point club I have been kind of going for the 100 charge club,” said Levenshus. “Coach Dunn told us when Ariana got hurt and, before that, when Lexie got hurt, that no one had to do anything different. It’s not like we weren’t trying hard before, we just had to come out and play more. We just had to continue to do what we do, just do it for more minutes.”
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Karlie Brogan scored 8 points in her final game for Ramapo, which finished the season with a 21-8 record. |
Ramapo’s senior class has had a good run as well and their three senior starters – Brogan (8 points), Rosie Martin (8 points) and Reilly White – combined for more than half of the Green Raiders points in their final high school game. Calabrese (11 points) and Butler (4 points), two juniors and the building blocks for next year, scored the rest.
“We really made a great run towards the end of the season and I really thought tonight might be our night. I guess our magic kind of ran out,” said Gordon, whose team finished the season with a 21-8 record. “We had some good looks, we had some in-and-outs and we didn’t get a lot of rolls our way. We were right there and we had chances, but kudos to them. Old Tappan’s defense had a lot to do with it.”
Crevani (16 points) and Sytsma (10 points) led the Knights on the offensive end, but they got contributions from everyone they ran out there. As crazy as it sounds with the two injuries, Old Tappan is still a deep team. Levenshus’ 6 points came at key points in the game, George made two field goals and ate up the space in the middle, Sullivan scored 4 off the bench, Sophie Downey made a basket and Kelsey McLaughlin (3 points), despite foul trouble, played her usual brand of tough defense against the opposition’s leading scorer and held her well below her season average.
Next up is North 2 champion Voorhees in Wednesday’s Group 3 state final after a couple of minutes spent enjoying a state straight sectional championship.
“We had the injuries to Lexie and Ariana and tonight we had Alex and Kelsey get in foul trouble, but we have a heart on this team that no one can take away from us. I feel like we really are the Golden Knights,” said Crevani. “It starts in practice with everyone working hard, with the JV team pushing us and being a part of this. We always feel like we will find a way to push through it and just play our game.”
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