January
14, 2005
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| PC's Luis Guzman had 12 points and seven assists before being heading to the bench with the rest of the starting five. | |
PARAMUS - With a 6-2 record, Paramus Catholic's boys basketball team is looking more and more like a top eight seed when the Jamboree committee sits down in less than two weeks to determine the field for the 2004 county tournament. Tournament play is the furthest thing from Paladin head coach Tony Campbell's mind right now, however. He is more concerned with his team's play in the present and its ability to develop the chemistry that championship teams have.
"It's still a bit premature," Campbell said of the Jamboree talk. "We're in our third year of this program, and we have a lot of learning to do yet."
Case
in point was Thursday night's 82-70 win over Passaic. PC owned 20-point plus
leads in the third and fourth quarter, yet watched the Indians whittle away
against the reserves and actually get the game within six points in the final
minute, forcing Campbell to put his starters back into the game.
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| Eddie Crockett and the Passaic starters accounted for all 70 of the Indians' points. |
"Basically, I took the starters out and tried to give the other guys a chance under decent pressure with a cushion," Campbell explained. "I wanted them to fight their way through it, but with 50 seconds left in the game I lost confidence in the second team."
That caused some last second fireworks as Passaic used its timeouts after baskets to stop the clock and fouls when the timeouts were gone. The Indians got called for a pair of intentional fouls, the second coming against Eddie Crockett in the final six seconds. Crockett was ejected from the game by the referee despite the fact that it was Crockett's fifth foul and he would have been done anyway.
Derrick
Truesdale led the Indian charge in the fourth quarter, netting 9 of his team-high
21 points, and Crockett, playing the entire fourth quarter with four fouls,
added seven. They turned a 65-45 deficit with 6:30 to go into a 76-70 game
off a Truesdale layup.
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| PC's Terrell McKenzie hit 6 of 7 free throws to close out the game. |
Terrell McKenzie then hit 6 of 7 free throws to close out the game, four of them off the double foul on Crockett. McKenzie was the game's high scorer with 24 points, including four three-point field goals.
"They're a scrappy team, they're athletic as all get out, and they're relentless," Campbell said of the Indians, who fell to 5-4 on the season. "They weren't going to give up."
The opening
quarter saw Passaic hit 7 of 10 shots from the field only to be trailing 16-15
thanks to a trio of three-pointers by Abib Gueye. The Indians last held the
lead at 21-20 with 5:58 to go after a Truesdale putback. Paramus Catholic
then used a 24-4 run over the rest of the quarter to establish their advantage,
and it was set up by some pressure defense and behind the arc success.
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| Rashad Stephens was one of four Passai starters to finish in double figures. |
"They were doing a good job of getting second shots," Campbell commented about the defensive pressure, "and we needed to get them off the boards and create some turnovers. We made some big shots when we needed to, got some rebounds and some fast breaks and got the game going our way."
Luis Guzman started things with a long three, then Lawrence Williams hit a conventional three-point play before McKenzie swished a trey. Rashad Stephens scored inside for Passaic, but Rich Grant hit a three and McKenzie knocked down two foul shots to make it 34-23 with 2:20 to go in the second.
After
another Stephens layup, PC scored the final 10 points of the period, highlighted
by Williams' running dunk. After a 5 of 17 first quarter, PC shot 23 of 43
the rest of the way from the floor, including 9 of 20 from three-point range.
They were 17 of 28 at the free throw line, as Williams (17 points) Gueye (13)
and Guzman (12) joined McKenzie in double figures. Gueye and Sean Canty topped
the Paladins with 7 rebounds each and Guzman dished off 7 assists.
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| Lawrence Williams scored 17 points off the PC bench, including two on a breakaway dunk in the second quarter. |
"We're going to need a few more games to know where we really are right now," Campbell said. "We're doing really well in our league, but our independent games we haven't done as well. We need to develop the chemistry, and we need more games for that."
Passaic also had four double figure scorers, with Stephens (15), Crockett (13) and Rayshon Wilder (12) joining with Truesdale. In fact, the starting five scored all 70 of the Indians' points, as Dushawn Singleton put down nine. By comparison, PC got 26 points from their bench players, with Williams' total making up the majority.
Stephens and Singleton each grabbed 10 rebounds and Wilder had 6 assists for Passaic. The Indians were 27 of 61 from the floor and 15 of 21 at the line, but they committed 23 turnovers, most of them coming in the second and third quarters.
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