LINDEN, NJ–The week has concluded at the fifth annual Linden Team Camp, and it was the best field ever with 16 teams representing five different conferences. Among those sixteen squads were two teams from the Greater Middlesex Conference: Piscataway and Sayreville. The Bombers were a last minute replacement in the camp as they filled the spot left open when Asbury Park dropped out.
Looking at the field, you have the perennial powerhouses in New Jersey High School Boys Basketball in St. Patrick’s, St. Anthony’s, Christian Brothers Academy, Linden, and Elizabeth, but there are also a number of teams that are coming off very successful campaigns in 2009-10 such as Hillsborough (lost to Plainfield in the North Jersey Section 2 Group IV Championship), Newark Central (lost to Newark University in the North Jersey Section 2 Group I Championship), Point Pleasant Beach (lost to Woodbury in the South Jersey Group I Championship), and East Orange Campus (won North Jersey Section 1 Group IV Championship before losing to Plainfield in the Group IV state semifinals). There are also solid teams in Cranford, St. Mary’s of Elizabeth, Raritan, Immaculata, and Hillside, which also qualified for state tourney play this past season.
Of the sixteen teams in the field, there were four teams ranked in the final Star-Ledger Top 20 (St. Patrick’s, St. Anthony’s, Christian Brothers, and Newark Central). GMC Hoops did not get out to the camp until the final day of action due to commitments to the Kean Pre-Summer League and the Montgomery Team Camp. The site did learn that Piscataway and Sayreville did play earlier in the week in a very good game that the Chiefs won by about ten. Speaking with P-Way head coach, Guy Jensen, we learned that the Chiefs were playing in this camp without six players, which had commitments to AAU.
The site was able to see Piscataway and Sayreville play both of their games on Thursday. The Chiefs faced off against Hillsborough in its first game, and then East Orange Campus in its lone crossover matchup. P-Way garnered a hard fought win in the opener against Hillsborough (40-37), but lost to East Orange Campus (47-34). The Chiefs have plenty of talent with an incoming junior class that won the 2009 Perth Amboy Freshman Tournament when they were 9th graders. As sophomores, many of them contributed to the Junior Varsity squad’s success. The JV reached the finals of the 2010 East Brunswick JV Tournament before losing to Hillsborough’s JV. Speaking of the Junior Raiders, they reached the Final Four of the EB JV Tourney in each of the past two seasons.
In addition to that incoming junior talent, there are seniors such as Brian Wong, Thierno Diallo, Anthony Greene, and Danny Cole as well as soon to be sophomore, Marcus Freeney, the younger brother of former P-Way standouts Rodney Freeney and Robert Freeney Jr. The Chiefs sorely missed senior Wayne Newsome down the stretch, but this talented group got valuable experience of playing in games without the four year varsity player, and that may help the team going into this summer and next season. Meanwhile, Sayreville, which had been a surprise to some experts this past season, won’t be one at all next season with a solid core returning including: Mark Keir, Darryl Stephenson, Syd Holt, soon to be sophomore Joe Saitta, and newcomer and Bomber football standout, Delon Stephenson.
The question for the Bombers will be their depth. Michael Phair will be one of the key players off the bench for head coach, Shawn Currie, who gave the reserves playing of opportunities to get experience on the last day of the camp. First, he played them in the entire fourth quarter against St. Patrick’s, which still had Michael Gilchrist and Derrick Gordon on the floor early on in the period. Then, in the nightcap at the Linden P.A.L., he played the youngsters for a good six to six and a half minutes of the final period against Point Pleasant Beach after his starters put together a 13-4 showing in the third by holding the Garnet Gulls to no points over the final 6:57 of the third, and no field goals for the final 9:32. The reserves preserved the lead, and the Bombers went on to win, 44-39.
Sayreville has several key ingredients again this season that will help them be a force again in the GMC: solid guard play with Keir, Saitta, and Delon Stephenson, size with Holt and Darryl Stephenson along with Phair, and tough, physical defense. These were the same ingredients that allowed the Bombers to reach the semifinals of the GMCT for the first time since winning it all in 2000. Expect both the Chiefs and the Bombers to be factors in the 2010-11 season.