February
29, 2004
March 21,
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Point guard Nikki Flores led IHA in a successful halfcourt offense before fouling out late in the fourth quarter. |
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PARAMUS - With less than a minute left in the championship game of the 30th Bergen County Women Coaches Association Basketball Tournament, Immaculate Heart's Daryl Cioffi came over to her team's bench and said to no one in particular, "they're trying to steal our championship from us."
Pascack Valley was in the midst of a comeback from a 14-point fourth quarter deficit, having narrowed the gap to two points, and thoughts of overtime were dancing in the minds of many in the standing room only crowd.
Junior
Emile Taus stood at the free throw line with 27 seconds to go facing two shots.
Taus was in the game because Nikki Flores, the Blue Eagle point guard, had
fouled out, and she calmly sank both shots and added another with 10.9 seconds
to go.
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| Heather Zurich hit all six of her second half free throws to help PV climb back into the game. |
That sparked IHA to its second county title in three seasons as the Eagles held off Pascack Valley by a 44-39 score at Paramus High School. It was the 11th time overall and the first time since 1994 that the top two seeds played in the championship game, and only the fourth time (and the first since 1986) that the second seed had won.
The win by the Blue Eagles also gave their first-year head coach, Jen Bednarek, a piece of tournament history, as she became the second person to win the title as a player and a head coach. Bednarek, who won with Paramus Catholic as a player in 1975-76, joins Rebecca Gattoni, who hit the winners' circle as a player with Pascack Valley (1980-81) and coached Ridgewood to three crowns (1991-93-94).
"We had confidence in Emile," Flores said, and Cioffi added that, "we have a lot of depth on this team, and everybody contributes."
Taus' third foul shot made it 42-39, and PV (23-2) came down with a chance to tie, but drove the ball to the hoop before having it knocked away before a shot could be had. Vanessa Holden was then fouled and made both with three seconds to go to clinch the championship.
"Before
the game I felt it would be won at the free throw line," Bednarek assessed.
"I expected them to foul some to slow us down and get us out of our pace,
but we stepped up in the half court offense."
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| Vanessa Holden helped IHA get off to a fast start. |
At the beginning, it seemed as though free throws would be the least of the Eagles' worries, as they stifled Valley with a blanketing defensive effort. The Indians had an un-PV-like six turnovers in the first period, which ended with IHA (22-2) up by 8-2. Cioffi had two of her three steals in the game in the opening four minutes.
"Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships," Cioffi said, and teammate Tahirah Williams paid her a teammate a great compliment.
"We have one of our best defenders over there," said Williams. "She's amazing. She just baits them and then goes in and strips it."
"We work so well together," Cioffi continued. "If I go (for the ball) I know that Nikki and "T" (Tahirah Williams) or somebody has my back. That's how we've gelled so well together."
Thanks
to a Heather Zurich basket at the halftime buzzer (her only two points of
the first half), Pascack Valley was down only 17-12. Both teams were playing
strong defense, with neither team being able to string points together.
That changed
in the third quarter when IHA opened the second half with an 8-0 run over
the first 4:07.
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| Daryl Cioffi (right) was a factor on the defensive end against Dana Beierle and Pascack Valley's offense. |
Williams hit for a pair of jumpers in the key, her first real good looks of the game, and, after a Zurich basket, stepped out for a three-point field goal that made it 28-14 for the Eagles.
"They were playing me very tight in the first half," Williams explained, "but once the others were scoring, they had to play them tighter and it opened up some space for me."
The third quarter ended at 32-20 IHA, and when Lenissa Lopez hit a jumper to start the fourth, it was back to a 14-point margin.
"I couldn't be prouder of my team," PV head coach Jeff Jasper said. "We may not have won because they scored more points, but as far as being successful, they are successful. If you want to know what you can get out of sports, it's the idea that you never give up, you fight and you believe.
"You believe in you and you believe in those around you, and that's what they did. They were amazing."
The Indians
kept scratching their way back into the game, helped by three straight misses
on the front end of one-and-ones by the Eagles. Erin Thames came off the bench
to score all 10 of her points in the second half, including the first five
Valley points in the final quarter.
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| Leni Lopez is a part of IHA's senior class that won its second county championship in the last three years. |
Zurich (10 points) went 6 for 7 at the line, with her last two making it 38-36 with 27 seconds left. After Taus hit her two foul shots, Kristen Brown (11 points) got a layup on a long pass off the inbounds to get PV back to within a deuce. Williams and Brown traded free throws that had it 41-39 before Taus upped it to three.
"We knew that defense and rebounding were going to be the key," Bednarek related, "and that's what's going to help us win the rest of the way. We set a goal before the game of (allowing no more than) 38 points, and they ended up with 39, so we were right there. These kids know the numbers and they work the numbers."
Williams was the only IHA player in double figures with 12 points, and she had 6 rebounds and 3 blocked shots. Cioffi also had 5 rebounds and Flores added 4 rebounds and 3 assists. The Eagles were 15 of 34 shooting and 12 of 22 at the free throw line compared to 15 of 31 and 8 of 15 for Pascack Valley.
"Winning the county tournament is recognizable," Bednarek noted, "because nobody really understands the states. Everybody understands the county champion. Now, we have two down (including the NNJIL title) and we move on to the next one."
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