Tyler Veale hit a 3-pointer with 2:37 left in the game to set up Wayne Valley's 56-49 win over Old Tappan in the opening round of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional tournament.
OLD TAPPAN – Joe Leicht is a North Jersey sports treasure who has coached innumerable games in multiple sports. In basketball alone the number now stands at 1,055 between 21 years as Indian Hills’ head coach and now in his 21st season at Wayne Valley. His win count is a staggering 651, but legends like Leicht, always seem to remember the losses more vividly.
We digress for a second to spotlight the first one he ever suffered.
“It happened right here in December of 1981,” said Leicht, pointing to his surroundings in the gym at Northern Valley/Old Tappan high school where Wayne Valley was on Wednesday night in the opening round of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional tournament. “My first game was here with Indian Hills. We fell behind by 20 [points] and I just started calling timeouts. We called 15 timeouts in the game, we cut it to 3 but we lost.”
Wait, 15 timeouts?
“Yeah. One shot and you would get the ball,” he said, laughing. “The next year they changed it to the way it is now. My second one was at Pascack Valley against my good friend Mike O’Brien. We fell behind by 20 and we came back and won and that was my first win.”
It’s been an amazing career, one that is still going strong as Leicht’s Wayne Valley team, the No. 9 seed, went on the road and picked up 56-49 win over No. 8 Old Tappan to move on to the quarterfinal round where it will play in the Northern Valley again, this time against top-seeded Demarest on Friday.
To get there, Wayne Valley made some outside shots, a necessity against Old Tappan, which plays zone almost exclusively, and hit the offensive glass when they missed.
Dylan Drullinsky, the lone senior in Old Tappan's starting 5, finished his career with a team-high 13 points.
“The big thing for our team this year has been rebounding and in this game tonight we did that; we rebounded the ball well,” said Wayne Valley’s Zach Derstine, the 6-foot-8-ish center who finished with a double-double (12 points, 14 rebounds). “They were in a zone, so they had to turn their backs to look at the rim and we could run right around them [to get to the offensive glass].”
Every extra possession was key in a game in which neither team led by more than four points in the first half until Wayne Valley closed the second quarter with eight straight points. Nick D’Apolito hit two 3-pointers on either end of a Luke Rubino floater as Wayne Valley grabbed a 27-20 lead at the break.
Old Tappan was quick to answer in the third quarter as senior Dylan Drullinsky, who recently reached the 1,000-career point milestone hit a 3 out of the locker room and the Knights gave chase until finally making a couple of key plays inside the final minute.
Because Old Tappan’s zone affords the opposition the opportunity to dictate pace, Wayne Valley was able to hold for the last shot in each of the first two quarters and was on its way to doing the same in the third after Isaac Schrager’s 3-pointer got the Golden Knights even at 35 with 44 seconds to go in the period.
Wayne Valley (17-9) was still in possession with under five seconds to go, but a turnover led to a run-out for Drullinsky, who made a lay-up, finished off the conventional 3-point play and gave the home team a 38-35 lead heading into the fourth quarter, where things stayed tight for the first five-plus minutes.
Nick D'Apolito and Wayne Valley will visit top-seeded Demarest in the quarterfinals.
Derstine scored inside to give Valley a 43-42 lead with 3:53 to go before. On the other end, sophomore David Brennan looked like he had put Old Tappan back in front with a tough jumper from the elbow, but a timeout was called before the ball left his hand and a missed shot out of the huddle led to a fastbreak the other way.
And that led to Tyler Veale all alone in the corner, from where he launched the dagger.
“That kid [Brennan] is good. He is hard to guard, so when the timeout happened it was kind of like a lucky moment,” said Veale. “The momentum just carried over to the other end and I made that shot. [Coach Leicht always talks about having the dog in you to finish a game. They beat us earlier in the year, but today we had that dog in us in the second half to pull away and get the win.”
Veale’s 3 was part of an 9-0 run that took Wayne Valley from down one to a 50-42 lead with 1:38 left in the game that turned the tide in its favor for good.
All but two points in the game came from the 10 players that made up the two starting lineups. Old Tappan, which finished the season at 13-13, was led by Drullinsky, the only senior in the starting lineup who finished with 13, while Brennan (11 points) and Nick Holloway (10 points) also reached double figures. Schrager added 9 and Joey Martin had the other 6 points for the Knights.
Veale led all scorers with 19, Luke Rubino added 14, Derstine had 12 and D’Appolito scored all 9 of his points from behind the arc in the first half. Nick Rubino’s two fourth quarter free throws were the only bench points for either side.
Before Ramapo took a strangle hold on this section with three straight titles and two straight outright Group 3 state championships, North 1, Group 3 was the wild west of North Jersey public school brackets when there was no such thing as an upset. It might be heading back in that direction now as the quarterfinals are loaded. Seven of the eight top seeds made it through Round 1 and things are about to get interesting.
The lower seeds in the next round are Wayne Valley (9), Ramapo (7), Wayne Hills (6) and Montville (5). None of them can be counted out against Demarest (1), Tenafly (2), Teaneck (3) or Northern Highlands (4), respectively.
“I have been in Group 3 boys, Group 3 girls in all sports. Group 3 is murder in boys, girls in all sports. Just look at the teams that are in here and how they have gone far in other tournaments,” said Leicht. “This is a great win because it is a Group 3 win on the road and the kids really came through.”
FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THIS EVENT PLEASE CLICK HERE. TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT OF THIS STORY PLEASE VISIT 4-FeetGrafix.com.
