SOUTH AMBOY, NJ–On Wednesday afternoon, GMC Hoops traveled down to South Amboy for our last scrimmage of the pre-season between New Brunswick and South Amboy. Before that though, I made another stop across town to Cardinal McCarrick High School to drop off some hardware to the Eagles. As you know, over the past five seasons, GMC Hoops has had a special feature on the site called the GMC Hoops Trophy, which reward teams that do well in games that the site covers. Over the past several months, I’ve been going out to the schools of the last five winners of the trophy to give them their award. And, the award is no rinky-dink award either. Several of the coaches will attest to that. Well, anyway, I stopped by there to give Cardy Mac its second of two GMC Hoops Trophies. This latest one was for the 2004-05 team that went 23-5, finished undefeated in the GMC Blue, and won the Non-Public B South Championship.
GMC Hoops had the opportunity to talk to Eagles head coach, Joe Lewis, who is enthusiastic as always about his team, and who can blame him. With the likes of Mike Burwell and Julio Rosario along with a talented junior class as well as St. Peter’s transfer, Dominic Appiah, there’s reason to be happy coming into 2007-08 at McCarrick. The Eagles have played well during the scrimmage season including a recent exhibition at Linden High School. The Tigers, which had their share of ups and downs during the summer, appears to be headed in the right direction as The Home-News Tribune has them ranked first once again in the paper’s Pre-Season Top Ten. On Wednesday, the Eagles were going on a trip to South Plainfield to take on those Tigers in a pre-season scrimmage. Following our stop at Cardy Mac, GMC Hoops had some spare time, and traveled over to Waterfront Park right by South Amboy Middle/High School to take in some of the changes in the weather that were taking place. The National Weather Service had indicated that there would be some wintry weather coming this way on Thursday. Waterfront Park is one of the nicest parks in Middlesex County with a view of the waterfront is so picturesque. Cardinal McCarrick now plays their football games there including a recent matchup against Bishop Ahr on Thanksgiving Eve. In addition, the Eagles and South Amboy play their baseball games down there. As a matter of fact, the GMC plays some of their games in the baseball tournament in the park as well.
After spending about twenty minutes at the park, I got back into the car, and headed back out on to George O’Leary Boulevard to stop over at South Amboy Middle/High School, and watch the scrimmage. Getting there a few minutes early, I sat down and finished up my preparations as the South Amboy JV and Varsity were all stretching out. New Brunswick didn’t arrive until a little while later. In the meantime, South Amboy head coach, George Krzyzanowski stopped over to chat for a little bit, and discussed his assessment of the team at this point. “This is our final scrimmage,” the long time (30 years) head coach stated, “and we’ve gone 4-1 so far.” Overall, Krzyzanowski is happy with the way things are going. The only setback if there has been one was the fact that a 6’5″ player that recently came to the U.S. from Europe, decided not to play so that he could concentrate more on soccer. One of the things discussed was how the GMC Gold was looking, particularly, Piscataway Vo-Tech, which according to the team capsule in the 2007-08 Basketball Preview that appeared in the Wednesday edition of the Home News-Tribune, has plenty of size on this year’s team with a roster consisting of four players 6’4″ or taller. When the Zebras finally arrived, my curiosity was satisfied when Brandon Smith walked in with the rest of the team. During the off-season, there had been some speculation that Smith wasn’t going to play since he was getting Division I interest for football. A teammate from last season, and fellow football player, Marquis Hamm, who recently committed to take to the gridiron for Rutgers University in the fall, decided that he was not going to play hoops for NBHS in 2007-08.
Speaking of football interest in Smith, there would be a special guest at this scrimmage between the Guvs and Zebras, and that was current Rutgers head football coach, Greg Schiano, who was obviously there to see Smith. There was quite a stir around the State of New Jersey last week when it was learned that Schiano was having discussions with the University of Michigan about the head coaching vacancy there in the wake of the resignation of Lloyd Carr. Within days though, Schiano decided to stay put at Rutgers, and continue building the program to national prominence as he had promised upon his arrival several years ago. This was not the first time, GMC Hoops had a Coach Schiano sighting. Back on November 10, 2007, the web site happened to catch Schiano on the sidelines during Piscataway’s game against Woodbridge in the first round of the North Jersey Section 2 Group IV Tournament. At his side was not only top freshman, and former P-Way standout, Anthony Davis, but also Davis’ older brother Andre Davis, who played hoops at St. Patrick’s alongside Derrick Caracter. The elder Davis also played a season at Piscataway back in 2002-03. The younger Davis also played basketball at Piscataway. He was a member of a freshman team that reached the Final Four of the 2004 Perth Amboy/GMC Freshmen Tournament before losing to eventual champion, South Plainfield in the semifinals.
Getting back to the scrimmage, there were six quarters played. Four played by the varsity, and two played by the JV squads. In the Junior Varsity Scrimmage, New Brunswick jumped out to 4-0, 6-3, and 8-5 leads before South Amboy rallied to take a 9-8 edge, and the two teams went back and forth before the quarter ended in a 15-15 tie. Then, in the final period, the Junior Zebras left little room for doubt with a 13-0 tear to start the period, and won the frame by a 15-4 margin for a 30-19 scrimmage edge. See details in the JV Roundup. In the varsity scrimmage, South Amboy won the first three periods by 9-7, 11-8, and 23-6 margins for an eventual 52-31 overall edge in the exhibition. For the exhibition, the Guvs went 16 of 33 from two point range for 48.5 percent, and 5 of 12 from beyond the arc for 41.7 percent for a combined total of 21 of 45 for 46.7 percent while the Zebras were 15 of 42 from inside the arc for 35.7 percent, and 0 of 5 from downtown for a combined 15 of 47 for 31.9 percent. The only real negative for the Guvs was their effort at the foul line as they went only 5 of 13 from the charity stripe for 38.5 percent while New Brunswick took only five free throw attempts, and made one for 20 percent. Looking at other statistical departments, New Brunswick held advantages in rebounding (30-28) and offensive rebounding (15-10), but South Amboy, which actually made the most of their offensive boards with eight second chance points versus only six by the Zebras, led in every other stat category with more assists (12-9), steals (20-13), blocks (2-1), charges (3-0), and turnovers (21-31). In addition, the Governors scored 11 points off the Zebra miscues including four fast break points. Conversely, New Brunswick registered only four points off Guv turnovers including two on the break.
Individually speaking, Brandon Smith led the charge for New Brunswick with 9 points on 4 of 11 field goals and 1 of 3 at the line while collecting 10 rebounds, 2 assists, and a steal. Smith scored all seven of his team’s points in the opening period, but only got two the rest of the way including none over the final two quarters of action. Juan James chipped in with four points on 2 of 7 shooting from the floor while picking up 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals. Meanwhile, for South Amboy three players scored in double figures including senior guard, Mark Simko, who started slowly, but ended up making 6 of 13 shot attempts including 2 of 5 from beyond the arc for 14 points along with 6 steals, 4 assists, 3 rebounds, a block, and a charge. Larry Lenahan struggled from the field by only going 4 of 11, but made 3 of 6 from the line for 11 points along with 15 boards for a double-double. Sophomore, Joey Charmello chipped in also with 12 points on 5 of 8 shooting including 2 of 3 from beyond the arc for 62.5 percent to go along with 4 steals, an assist, a rebound, and a charge. Obviously the most decisive quarter was the third when the Governors shot 10 of 12 from the field for a scorching 83.3 percent while limiting the Zebras to just 2 of 10 for 20 percent. Moreover, the Guvs made only three turnovers while forcing New Brunswick to commit seven.
Despite appearing a bit tentative early on, the Guvs showed remarkable poise against a Zebra team that looked quite intimidating when they walked into the gym. After turning the ball over 12 times over the first two periods of action, South Amboy only made nine miscues the rest of the way while forcing the Zebras to commit 17 turnovers in the same stretch. Most importantly though, the Guvs showed great progress in two key areas: 1.) Playing better defense, and 2.) Playing smarter basketball. In a game against Ocean Township in the 2007 Rebounds Fall League on October 1st, the Governors didn’t play smart, and it cost them the game. They appeared to be trying to block every shot taken instead of either raising their hands straight into the air, or better yet, draw charges. In the scrimmage, however, the team played much better defense, and didn’t commit stupid fouls. The only issue with the Guvs coming away from this scrimmage was the poor performance at the foul line. For the scrimmage, the Guvs were just 5 of 13 for 38.5 percent. Outside of Lenahan (3 of 6 for 50 percent) and Poltrictzky (2 of 3 for 66.7 percent), the team was 0 of 4. Commenting on the free throw woes after the scrimmage, Lenahan stated, “I don’t know what it is, but we (the team) can’t seem to hit our foul shots this year.” The Guvs will need to correct that, especially if it becomes a key factor in close games with such division rivals as Dunellen and Piscataway Tech.
Meanwhile, for New Brunswick, the team’s biggest issue is perimeter shooting and foul shooting. Even during the successful run during the early part of the decade with the likes of Marvin Taylor, Dwayne Jarrett, Jamall Jenkins, Eric Bynes, and Willie Stewart, the team had its struggles scoring from the outside consistently. Case in point, the memorable 2003 GMCT Tournament semifinal against St. Joseph’s. A lot is talked about how then head coach, and current Franklin coach, Odie Page, called a timeout with seven seconds to play not realizing that St. Joseph’s was out of timeouts. However, what was forgotten about that game was the fact, that the Zebras went 12 of 29 from the charity stripe for 41.4 percent including numerous missed front ends of one and ones, and both double bonus shots. Those failures enabled the Falcons to come back behind the clutch shooting performance of Jonathan Dixon to win at the buzzer. In this particular scrimmages, those old issues played a role. New Brunswick was 15 of 47 overall from the floor including 0 of 5 from beyond the arc. In addition, the Zebras couldn’t buy many jumpers from inside the arc as well. On top of that, New Brunswick was only one of five from the foul line for 20 percent.
While the Zebras attacked the glass for 15 rebounds, they didn’t convert many second chance opportunities by only getting six second chance points. They also had a lot of turnovers, which is a concern since they were playing in their final exhibition. Smith looked good overall with ten rebounds and a couple of assists, and James, who was the most familiar face for the Zebras during the summer at Bound Brook, also played well despite only making 2 of 7 from the field. When you have a point guard that is not afraid to go inside and mix it up for seven rebounds, that’s a positive the Zebras can build on. And that’s not an accident. Back during the summer, James pulled down quite a few boards in a loss to Immaculata on July 3rd. Ironically, it was free throws that did the Zebras in that time as well. Over the final 15:21 of the contest, the Zebras managed to make only 2 of 9 foul shots including 1 of 8 in the last 5:07. New Brunswick has always had athleticism, quickness, and talent, but for them to become a really solid team that can compete in the likes of the GMC White, it will have to develop better and more consistent perimeter shooting, and improved foul shooting.