A Look Back on the 2014 Tournament of Champions

This Year’s T of C One of the Best Ever

TRENTON, NJ–Usually when you get to the Tournament of Champions, many of the games aren’t really that competitive.  Take, for instance, the semifinals from last year, or two and three years ago.  None of those games were as close as the semifinal matchups this year.   While the finals in recent years have been battles, the semis have not.  This year’s T of C as a whole could go down as one of the best ever.  While it didn’t have any of the major powerhouses of Garden State boys basketball like St. Anthony’s or the Patrick School, it had all but one of its five games determined by four points or less including three that went down to the final seconds. You would have a very difficult time finding any other T of C that had that.

Then, the other matchup, still had something to remember it by although Roselle Catholic won the game by a score of 98-80.  I don’t recall any T of C game, where both teams combined for nearly 180 points, and one of those teams getting near 100.  The Lions, which had a great state tourney run just to get to the T of C this year after winning it all last year including a finals victory over St. Joseph’s (63-45), could have easily gotten 100 points in the contest, but settled for three point attempts rather than go in for layups in the waning moments.  Very few if any T of C had an individual game with that kind of scoring. Speaking of the last year’s T of C champs, four of the six teams that reached the T of C, were in the 2013 T of C.  Then, when you throw in Linden, a team that lost to the Group IV participant in last year’s T of C, Atlantic City, in the Group IV state final, you had five teams coming off great seasons last year that still managed to reach a high level of success again this year.

The average margin of victory in the 2014 T of C was less than 6 points per game.  The average won/loss record of the teams in this year’s T of C was 25-8.   Defense was a very big part of this T of C as it should be.  You can’t win championships without defense.  In four of the five games played, the winning team scored no more than 64 points.  Two of those games that involved Newark East Side, the scoring was only in the 40s.  The Red Raiders did an outstanding job from the state finals to the T of C final of playing great team defense and shutting down their opposing team’s best player.  

In the Group III State Championship against Ewing, the Raiders held Trey Lowe to 8 points below his scoring average for the year while limiting the Blue Devils to under 60 points for only the third time this season.  In the TOC semifinals against Roselle Catholic, Newark East Side limited the Lions standout, Isaiah Briscoe, to just 6 points, which was 15 below his average, and an RC team that had scored 60 points in the win over St. Anthony’s in the Non-Public B final, and 98 points against Newark Tech in the TOC quarterfinals, to under 50 points.  Finally, NES held Kentucky bound big man, and Gatorade National Player of the Year, Karl Towns to just 8 points, his lowest scoring output this season.   The Falcons were able to match the defensive intensity of not only East Side in the finals, but also Linden in the semifinals.  St. Joe’s gave up an average of just 53 points per game in the two rounds it played in this year’s TOC.

St. Joseph’s reached the TOC for the third straight year, which is something that no other team from Middlesex County has ever done before.  Prior to St. Joe’s reaching the T of C for the first time in 2012, only Piscataway (1994) and Perth Amboy Tech (1993) reached the state tourney’s holy grail.   This was the best season ever for the Falcons with the most wins at 30, which edged out the 2011-12 team led by Quenton DeCosey (Temple) that finished 29-2.  The Falcons also won their third straight sectional and state title.  Prior to two years ago, the Falcons had never won a state title losing to Seton Hall Prep in the Non-Public A finals back in 1992, 1998, and 1999.  St. Joe’s has only won 6 sectional titles, and they’ve all come from 1992 on.  The Falcons also became the first ever Middlesex County school to win five straight MCT/GMCT titles eclipsing the previous mark of four set by the Perth Amboy teams of 1972-75.  Speaking of repeating, Roselle Catholic still has plenty to be proud of despite not winning it all again this year.

The Lions put together a tremendous run in the state tournament.  Roselle Catholic played some of the top teams in the state from the semifinal round of the Non-Public B South tournament until they bowed out in the T of C semis.  In the sectional semifinals, Roselle Catholic traveled down to Trenton Catholic to face the top seeded Iron Mikes, and came away victorious.  Then in the sectional final, the Lions defeated a Patrick School squad that had defeated them handily in their previous two meetings.  The victory in the sectional championship set up a rematch with St. Anthony’s, which was just as good, or even a better sequel to last year’s state final as the Lions won, 60-57.  Moving on to the T of C, RC faced a familiar foe in the quarterfinals in Newark Tech, a team that the Lions had dispatched in the 2013 TOC semifinals.  Like last year though, this game was no contest although it was just as physical and even higher scoring.

There was also some controversy in this year’s T of C.  Both the quarterfinal game involving Pitman and Linden, and the semifinal game involving Newark East Side and Roselle Catholic.  In the contest between East Side and RC, Ismael Sanogo was fouled by Matt Bullock with 1.6 seconds left, and made one of two from the foul line for the 47-46 win and a date with St. Joseph’s in the final while Linden was able to withstand a fourth quarter rally by Pitman thanks to the Panthers having too many players on the floor with two seconds left in the game.  The Tigers made the two technical free throws, and another pair to wrap up the 64-60 victory, and a date with St. Joe’s in the semifinals.  Another aspect of this year’s T of C, were the dramatic comebacks.  

In Linden’s win over Pitman, the Panthers trailed 46-33 late in the third before rallying with a 27-14 surge to tie the score before the fateful miscue in the waning seconds.  Newark Eastside trailed both Roselle Catholic and St. Joseph’s by at least 7 points entering the fourth quarter before rallying to take the lead.  St. Joseph’s had more time to overcome its deficit to defeat the Red Raiders for the title.  The most memorable comeback that many will remember from this year’s T of C was in the semifinal contest between Linden and St. Joseph’s.  The Falcons led 48-28 with 2:48 left in the third before the Tigers rallied with a 29-10 surge over a span of exactly 10 minutes to pull within one on an Otis Livingston three pointer with 48.6 seconds left.  St. Joseph’s managed to survive though by outscoring the Tigers by a 5-2 margin the rest of the way for the 63-59 victory.

When you put together the level of competition that participated in this year’s T  of C, the number of close and competitive games, the controversy, and dramatic comebacks, it is hard not to consider this year’s Tournament of Champions, the best ever.