Friday, March 5, 2010

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Kamil Rutkowski had 19 points, 18 rebounds and 6 assists for Garfield, which advanced to the North 2, Group 2 sectional semifinal with a 67-61 win in front of a packed house at Lodi High School.

LODI -- What happens when two towns that share Harrison Avenue and that are a the definition of geographical and league rivals play a state tournament sectional quarterfinal game in a gym designed to hold 800 people, but was instead packed to the gills with nearly 1,000? It is hard to explain except that nobody besides the man himself could hear the PA announcer and there was barely a breath of fresh air to be found at Lodi High School when the hometown Rams welcomed Garfield on Thursday night.

It was Lodi-Garfield, it was the Battle of Harrison Ave., it was rocking and it was sold out.

“I played at Garfield and when we walked in and both stands were packed, I was [my high school teammate Kevin] Montalbano over there and said to him ‘I want to put the uniform on,” said Chris Annibal, who instead had to settle for the suit he wears as Garfield’s head coach. “That is what I told my kids before the game. We told them to embrace it, we told them to enjoy it because this is something that they will remember for the rest of their lives because I remember when we played Lodi and here it is 20 years later.”

Lodi's senior point guard Ersi Bice closed out his stellar career with a team-high 22 points.

Garfield’s players will not only remember the game for its hyper-charged atmosphere, but also for 67-61 win that puts the Boilermakers into the North 2, Group 2 state sectional semifinals, which will be a home game against Newark Tech on Saturday night and the only game standing between Garfield and its first-ever trip to a section final.

It will also be remembered as the night that Garfield’s Richie Colon put on a shooting clinic. The junior guard made six second half three-pointers and made 7 of his 10 shots from behind the arc in the game, finishing with a game high 28 points.

Garfield had built as big as a 12-point lead in the first half and was ahead 26-14 after freshman Damon Godbolt made a steal and a layup, but Lodi answered with a 10-0 run to close the second quarter. Ersi Bice made a three-point either right at or just after the halftime buzzer to draw Lodi to within 26-24 at the break. The Rams then got a three-pointer from Viktor Gashi to open the third quarter and take their first lead of the night, which they bumped up to three points at 29-26 on Bice’s pull-up jumper.

But then Colon took over. He answered Bice’s jumper with his first three pointer of the second half to tie the game and then made another three on Garfield’s next possession to put the Boilermakers ahead, 32-29.

Garfield junior Richie Colon lining up three of his game-high 28 points. He made 7 of his 10 three-point attempts.

“I just tried to do what my coach told me; catch and shoot. My teammates got me the ball, I felt good and I knocked them down,” said Colon. “I love playing in front of such a big crowd. There was so much going on even in school, people talking about this game and it just got us excited to come out here and play. There was a lot of energy.”

Colon’s second three-pointer kicked off a 12-2 Garfield run that ended with Fraga’s follow up basket and made free throw that put the Boilermakers up 38-31. Lodi responded with a 7-0 run courtesy of a three-pointer and an inside hoop by Gashi and another inside bucket by Jawon Matthews that tied the game at 38.

But up stepped Colon again as he answered Matthews basket almost immediately with a three-pointer that put Garfield (17-9) ahead again, this time for good. The Boilermakers led 43-40 after the third quarter and went up by as many as 11 in the fourth quarter, 56-45, on, what else, a three-pointer by Colon.

“Our game plan was that we wanted to stop [Kamil] Rutkowski. We knew that if we stopped him that our other major concern was Colon and he just stepped it up in the second half when the game was on the line. You have to give him a lot of credit,” said Lodi head coach Ron Terhune. “The bottom line is that I think that they were too big for us. We wanted to penetrate and get to the line and we had Rutkowski in foul trouble. He had three in the first half, Fraga had two in the first half but in the second half we didn’t get those same kind of calls and it resulted in a lot of empty possessions for us in the second half.”

Viktor Gashi's 3-pointer to start the third quarter gave Lodi its first lead of the night.

Lodi did enough to make it interesting down the stretch and even drew as close as four points three times in the final 40 seconds at 62-58, 64-60 and 65-61, but Garfield never let the Rams get to within one possession in the fourth quarter and made 5 of 7 free throws in the final 35 seconds to keep Lodi at arm’s length and sew up what was one of the biggest wins in the program’s history.

“This rivalry is like Duke-Carolina on a much smaller scale,” said Annibal, whose team has added two state tournament wins to an outstanding season that already includes a win in the Bergen County Jamboree and a Holiday Tournament title. “I didn't expect this at the beginning of the season, but this was a great place to be, I am happy and we’ll get back to work tomorrow. We have a home game on Saturday night with a chance to go to the school’s first [section] final.”

Colon and Rutkowski were outstanding as they combined for 47 of Garfield’s 67 points and Rutkowski added 18 rebounds and six assists to go along with his 19 points. Fraga finished with 9 points, Godbolt had 6 and Jabbar Drakeford was solid at the point, handling the ball ably and allowing Colon to run off screens and find open spaces without having to dribble it up the floor.

Felipe Frage and Garfield are one win away from the school's first-ever trip to a section final.

Bice, the talented senior point guard who made a last second shot to lead Lodi to its first Bergen County Jamboree win since 1997 earlier this season, finished his outstanding high school career with a team-high 22 points for Lodi. Viktor Gashi (12 points) and Matthews (11 points) made it three Rams in double figures. Pajtim Dervishi (9 points) and Donat Gashi (7 points) rounded out the scoring for Lodi, which got all of its points from its five starters.

Although obviously disappointed with the loss, the event itself and the way it played out in front of a crowd that could have been bigger had some not been turned away at the door was not lost on Terhune, whose team finished up with a 15-9 record.

“Lodi-Garfield is tremendous for a regular season game, but to have a state sectional semifinal on the line here tonight…you saw what it brought out,” said Terhune, looking out the back door of the gym at a line of taillights backed up at a traffic light. ”Look at them. They are still filing out of here. It was crazy and fun to be a part of.”

FOR MORE PHOTOS OF THIS EVENT OR TO BUY A COLLECTOR'S PRINT OF THIS GAME STORY, PLEASE VISIT 4FeetGrafix.com.