Good evening. I continue to work on getting stuff into the blog. After all the work I put into the season, it’s been kind of weird to not have any games to go to, or tournaments to talk about. Well, anyway, there are still the memories to look back upon, and analyze. For instance, let’s take a look at the Piscataway Chiefs, and their run in the North Jersey Section 2 Group IV State Tournament. P-Way faltered in the semifinals of the Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament against St. Joseph’s, but instead of putting its head in the sand, and calling it a day, the school turned a negative into a huge positive by taking a page from last year’s South Brunswick team.
For those who may have forgotten, the Vikings, which had been the number one team most of the season, and had earned the top seed in the 2007 GMCT, was knocked off by a Cardinal McCarrick team that it had dominated in a game at SBHS a month and a half earlier. Up to that point in the season, the Vikes had been just about invincible. The loss to the Eagles could have been a crippling one that it could have never recovered from. However, South Brunswick used the difficult defeat as motivation for a state tourney run. In a Central Jersey Group IV field that had top seeded Freehold Township with one loss, and a second seeded Rancocas Valley squad that was quite talented as well, South Brunswick relished the role of the underdog, and didn’t mind being written off. In the semifinals, the Vikings traveled to Mount Holly, and proceeded to run Rancocas Valley out of its own gym in a victory. Then, in the Championship Game, SBHS played up tempo again, and shot very well to garner its first sectional crown since 1974.
The run didn’t stop there though because two nights later, the Vikings took the long journey down the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City, and defeated South Jersey Champion, Cherokee to earn its first state title game berth since Buddy Rose led the school to a surprising victory over an East Rutherford team led by Les Cason, and coached by none other than Dick Vitale in the 1968 Group I State Final. Unfortunately, the magical ride would end for the Vikes with a loss to two time Group IV State Champion, Linden in the final before 6,000 fans at the Rutgers Athletic Center. Similarly, Piscataway faced a similar proposition after losing to St. Joseph’s in the 2008 GMCT Final Four at South Brunswick High School. The North Jersey Section 2 Group IV Sectional Tournament field is always littered with mines from great teams such as the ones that lay in the Chiefs way: Watchung Hills, Union, and Linden.
The Chiefs played with something to prove in the tourney, and relished the role of the underdog despite the fact that they were the second seed in the tourney. Piscataway showed against Watchung Hills that it had regained the fire it had at the beginning of the season when it beat Immaculata and Seton Hall Prep in the 2007 Vaughn Stapleton Classic, and then soundly beat J.P. Stevens at JPS on January 3rd. The team hit on its shots from the perimeter and finished better on the inside despite some missed layups in the second half. P-Way had captured some of the offensive magic that had defined their 2007 GMCT run. While three teams from the mighty Watchung Conference stood in the Chiefs way, two of them had two knock each other out while the other had to come to Piscatway, and come away with a victory. Union, which had defeated Cardinal McCarrick several weeks earlier, couldn’t pull out the win against the Chiefs, which had amassed an unbeaten record at home in 2007-08.
In the Championship Game, P-Way took it to a Linden team, which had defeated the likes of Mount Vernon and St. Raymond’s from New York. J.D. Griggs, Tristian Benjamin, Omar Smith, and Aaron Hush bottled up 6’9″ center David Bruce while the Tigers mounted a second half rally in the third quarter, but couldn’t overtake the Chiefs. Once Piscataway rode out the storm, it was able to come away with the victory for its first sectional championship since 1995. The Red Division Champs then had a tougher time disposing of a much smaller, but fierce and fearless squad from Paterson Eastside, the North Jersey Section 1 Group IV Champs. However, in a more disappointing fashion, the Chiefs, which appeared to be on their way to winning its first state title since 1994, fell short of its dreams with a loss to Central Jersey Group IV Champion, Rancocas Valley in the state final.
Both teams overcame very difficult setbacks in the Final Four of the GMCT to make fine runs in the state tournament, and knock off highly touted opponents en route to sectional championships, and berths in the state finals.