January
7, 2006
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| On a tip-in with 1:19 to go in the third quarter on Friday night, Leonia junior Ahmed Hassan reached the 1,000 point mark for his career. | |
LEONIA -- In his two-plus seasons as a varsity player, Leonia junior Ahmed Hassan has made his reputation with his jumpshot. It is what earned him first team All-Bergen County honors last season and it was with that jumpshot that he had scored most of his 998 points heading into the final two minutes of the third quarter on Friday night against Emerson.
So it was a little surprising the way Hassan reached the 1,000-point career milestone. With 1:19 to go in the third quarter, Hassan came from the top of the key as Fidel Frias took a jumper from the wing. The ball bounced high off the rim and Hassan got up over a teammate to tap it in for points 999 and 1,000.
“Once I saw that shot go up I knew it was mine. I just tried to jump as high as I could and tip it in,” said Hassan. “I’m a shooter and I expected to get it on an outside shot, but the tip-in was just as good.”
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| Prashant Mathur and his textbook jumpshot kept Emerson in the game well into the fourth quarter. |
Emerson has played the foil to Hassan over the last two seasons. It was against the Cavos last January when he set his career-high mark of 50 points, but Emerson no longer resembles the Washington Generals and came into the game having won six of its first seven games. Hassan’s tip-in gave the Lions a 12-point lead, but after the game was stopped for a presentation of the game ball and some posed pictures at midcourt, the Cavos made a run at getting back in the game.
Emerson scored the last five points of the third quarter and, after Rob Randell opened the fourth quarter with a bucket, the Cavos were within five points. It took a Frias three-pointer and Dooley Watts’ layup off an assist from Pasquale DeSalvo for Leonia to regain its focus on the way to a 58-47 win, its seventh in eight games this season.
“After he got the 1,000th [point] we told them to enjoy the moment, but we had to go out there and finish it up,” said Leonia head coach Fran Orlowski. “We had to finish the game and get a victory out of it. Give Emerson credit, they could have just died after he scored his 1,000th, but they never did that.”
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| Fidel Frias' three-pointer with 5:48 to play in the game gave Leonia the breathing room it needed. |
Emerson has its own legitimate outside shooter in senior Prashant Mathur and it was his three-pointer that were the first points when the game resumed and drew the Cavos back to within single digits at 41-32. It also kicked off a 9-2 Emerson run that ended with Mathur’s putback of his own missed three-pointer that had the Cavos within five points, 43-38, with 6:11 to go in the game.
But then Frias hit the three from the wing that gave the Lions some breathing room and Watts’ inside basket pushed Leonia’s lead back to 10, 48-38, with 3:55 left. Leonia point guard Javier Labrada scored on two layups, the second on a pretty backdoor feed from Frias, to keep the Lions comfortably in front the rest of the way.
“It’s a big win, we both had one loss coming in and we knew that they were going to be fired up,” said Hassan. “They were coming at us, especially Prashant Marthur, he is a [heck] of a shooter, but we did a good job of boxing out and rebounding.”
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| Rob Randell's basket to open the fourth quarter brought Emerson to within five points. |
Hassan led Leonia (7-1, 4-1 BCSL-Olympic Division) with 18 points and was one of four Lions to finish in double figures. Watts added 13 points and pulled down a game-high 15 rebounds, Labrada and Frias each finished with 10 and Leonia won on its home floor for the first time in nearly three weeks after five straight games on the road.
Mathur, a three-year starter, led all scorers with 21 and Randell chipped in with 10 for Emerson (6-2, 3-2), which is on track for its first state tournament bid in five years. The Cavos won the Group 1 Holiday Tournament at New Milford and have some attainable postseason goals, which is nice to see for a program that has taken its lumps in the last few years.
“These guys really made a commitment to themselves and to the program after last year. They decided they wanted to make the state tournament, that was their goal,” said Emerson head coach Billy Connors. ”They went to two team camps, they played in a summer league and in a matter of 31 days between June and the end of July, they played 32 games. They’ve bought into the concept that they can win and it has paid off.”
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| Leonia's Dooley Watts (right) scored 13 points and pulled down a game-high 15 rebounds. |
Emerson is in the midst of a six-game stretch of in-league games and is looking to get some wins against the top teams in the BCSL-Olympic Division rather than just looking to survive. The Cavos have Cresskill and Ridgefield at home next week then visit Bergen Tech and Bogota the week after.
“We have six straight league games and to give legitimacy to what we have done over the first seven games we need to at least go 3-3,” said Connors. “We can’t lose every game to the top teams in the league and expect to be taken seriously, so we’ll see where it goes from here.”
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