Spotswood’s Soulias, Carteret, Piscataway Tech, and Timothy Christian Earn Week Six Honors

Spotswood Senior Honored For Second Time

SOUTH PLAINFIELD,  NJ–For the second time in the last four months, Spotswood’s Tommy Soulias is being honored by GMC Hoops as the Player of the Week.  The Chargers senior, who earned the honor for the Fall 2011 season, got the award again in week six thanks to a near record breaking performance.

Against neighborhood rival, South River, Soulias pumped in 42 points including 10 three pointers in a 96-71 victory.  The record for most three pointers in a game is held by former one thousand point scorer at Piscataway Tech, Charles Edwards, who connected on 11 threes in a game back in 2004.  In the win over the Rams, Soulias also had three field goals, six foul shots, four rebounds, and five assists.

Soulias has scored 30 points or more three times this season, and 20 points or more 11 times.  Through this Wednesday’s game against Middlesex, Soulias is averaging 21.3 points per game and 4.2 rebounds per game.  He has had a very balanced approach to his scoring with 60 field goals, 53 treys, and 60 foul shots.   The senior swingman has also collected 30 assists, 19 steals, and 5 blocks.

Led by Soulias, Spotswood has rebounded from a 7-18 season last year to post a 12-4 record including a 9-2 mark on the road.  The only two losses away from the Spotswood Athletic Center have come against two top ten teams in North Brunswick and Carteret.  Soulias is fast approaching a milestone as he now has 845 points.  With eight players in the GMC already over a 1,000 for their careers this year, Soulias will join a very crowded list when he reaches that plateau over the next couple weeks.  Congraulations Tommy, and best of luck the rest of the season.

Earning our Team of the Week honor in the GMC Profile for week six were the Carteret Ramblers.  The Ramblers recently defeated Bishop Ahr to tie for first place in the GMC Blue, and have only lost two games this season.  Both of those were to top ten opponents in BGA and South Brunswick.  Those two losses came within days of each other.  The Ramblers also won the Gene Haley Memorial Tournament over the holidays for the first time since 2005.  Carteret is one of the few teams that has been able to stop the week six Player of the Week, Tommy Soulias.  In the two games against Spotswood, the Ramblers held Soulias to an average of 5.5 points per game.

One of Carteret’s trademarks through the years has been defense.  Whether Bob Molarz, Dave Turco, John Dolan, Jose Rodriguez, or Herman White have coached at the school.  Defensively, the Ramblers make you work very hard on offense by making you earn every thing you get.  They can also make big plays on defense that can change the entire complexion of a contest.  Whether it is drawing a charge to swing momentum, or a steal that leads to an easy basket, the Ramblers use defense to create their offense.  By  working its opponents hard on the defensive end, Carteret is able to wear its foes down.  Carteret has a rugged, physical style of play anchored by frontcourt mates Kevin Van Dyke and Ryan Oliver.

Meanwhile, on offense, the Ramblers are led by seniors Avery Carter and Tanveer Dosanjh.  So far this season, Carter has scored in double figures in 14 of the 17 games played, and is averaging 13.7 points per game.   Meanwhile, Dosanjh has scored in double figures in 7 of the 17 contests this year, and is averaging just under 10 points per game.  The best performance Dosanjh had this season was a 28 point game against Spotswood back on January 20th in Carteret.  Carter’s top effort was against Edison in the opening round of the Gene Haley Tournament.  Our selection for Game of the Week went to the Gold Division for Piscataway Tech and Timothy Christian’s first place showdown on January 25th.

In the first meeting between the two schools back in December, P-Way Tech surged to a 46-25 victory thanks to a 32-14 showing in the second half.  This time, despite only getting a combined 18 points from their two 1,000 point scorers, Kristian Svendsen and Dan Decker, the Tigers were able to overcome a 25-16 halftime deficit, and 33-22 third quarter PVT advantage to come away with the 49-47 victory.  Sophomore Brandon Summers led the way with a career high 18 points on 8 of 9 shooting from the field.  The Raiders got 34 of their 47 points from Will Joyce (18 points) and Galen Smith (16 points).  P-Way Tech broke away from a 14-14 tie with an 11-2 tear to end the first half, and opened the second half with an 8-6 run for an 11 point lead.

However, TCS closed the game with a 27-14 surge including a reverse layup by Will Gaskin, who limited Smith to no threes in the second half, to tie the game at 45-45, and then a baseline jumper from Summers at the 1:46 mark for a 47-45 lead.  Decker and Jeff Parker each made one of two from the line down the stretch to help preserve the victory.