Friday, January 13, 2012

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Kevin McGorry scored 14 of his game-high 24 points in the thid quarter and notched his first career triple-double in Rutherford's 63-55 win over Fort Lee.

FORT LEE – The Rutherford boys basketball team has seen it happen before. Last week they came out guns-a-blazin' against Pascack Hills, scoring the first 14 points of the game and 17 of its first 19 before giving it all back and settling for a halftime tie and eventually a double digit loss. On Thursday night, the Bulldogs hit their first four shots of the game and opened up a 10-0 lead just 3:01 in only to see Fort Lee storm back to take a pair of one-point leads in the second quarter and grab the momentum even though it trailed by a point at halftime.

But a basketball season is long and there is time to learn from previous mistakes and Kevin McGorry made sure that Rutherford would not fold up this time. McGorry hit the first shot of the second half, a jumper from the elbow after flashing to the high post, and went on to score 14 of his game-high 24 points in the third quarter to right the ship as the Bulldogs kept their Bergen County Jamboree hopes alive with a 63-55 win in Fort Lee. McGorry, a 6-foot-5 center, also added 10 rebounds and 10 blocked shots to notch his first career triple-double.

“Getting the triple-double is nice, but getting a big win on the road that could help us get into the Jambo is a whole lot better,” said McGorry. “We had to limit our turnovers. That is what hurt us in that Pascack Hills game and Coach [Ken Cavanagh] told us that we had to play the full 32 minutes. That is what we did tonight.”

Josh Ford scored a twam-high 18 points for Fort Lee.

Before breaking out offensively in the third quarter, McGorry was held to just five first half points, but all of them came in the game-opening 10-0 run that left Fort Lee playing catch up all night. The Bridgemen were never out of the game as they got as close as three points midway through the fourth quarter, but the slow meant that they were playing from behind for all but 1:07 of the second quarter.

“We didn't come out with any urgency for the second game in a row. You can't go down 10-0 and expect that you are going to win a game. We are not good enough to play like that,” said Johnny Ziemba, the Fort Lee head coach who picked up his 300th career victory last week in a game against Dumont. “I think I am going to have to change the lineup a little bit. We had guys that didn't even break a sweat in the first four minutes and we have to get off to better starts then what we have in the last two games.”

Fort Lee did not get its first field goal of the game until the first quarter was nearly half over when Josh Ford put back his own missed shot and the Bridgemen trailed 14-4 after one, but finally got it together with a 7-0 run to start the second quarter that was kicked off by Tondi Mushandu's three-pointer from the corner. A 6-0 spurt that started with a Ford flip and finished with a Nick Gentile fastbreak basket set up by a block and outlet pass by 6-foot-10 center Rony Michaele put Fort Lee in front for the first time at 19-18 and the Bridgemen also led 21-20 after a coast-to-coast layup by Mushandu with 3:06 in the first half, but Brian Willis' drive to the basket put Rutherford back in front and it never trailed again.

Brian Kelly finished with 7 points for Rutherford.

The match-up in the post was interesting, especially in the first half, as much of the space in the paint was taken up by McGorry, Michaela and Stephen Kinzler, who came off the bench and finished just two rebounds shy of a double-double. Michaela's sheer size made Rutherford change a lot of its shots and the one that it didn't ended up getting sent back.

Michaela had six of his seven blocks in the first half and forced McGorry to change tactics. Instead of trying to get all the way to the basket, he killed the Bridgemen with his mid-range game. Of his seven field goals in the quarter, four of them came on pull-up jumpers, including the last two that that gave the Bulldogs their largest lead of the game at 48-36 heading into the fourth quarter.

“He was struggling inside early, he only had five points in the first half, but when he hit that jump shot right away to start the third quarter he kind of figured it out and stuck with it,” said Cavanagh, speaking of McGorry. “He's got some weapons. You want to play him tough inside, he'll take you inside. If you want to push out on his he can put it on the floor. He is a good player and he showed it again tonight.”

The middle loosened up as Rutherford's lead grew. Needing to speed up the pace to maximize is possessions, Michaela went to the bench and Fort Lee went with a speedier lineup that helped get it back in the game. It opened the fourth quarter with six straight points to cut the deficit in half and got two free throws from Gentile and a fastbreak layup from Mushandu to sneak back to within 49-46 with 4:40 to play.

Nick Gentile (10 points) was one of three double-digit scorers for Fort Lee.

During that 10-1 run, Fort Lee turned Rutherford over five times the last of which led to two free throws that could have gotten the Bridgemen to within a single point but two misses ended those hopes. Fort Lee then forced another turnover and Mushandu made a driving layup only to see it waived off as Kinzler stepped in to draw a key charge. Kinzler then hit the offensive glass on the other end to push Rutherford's lead back to five points at 51-46 with 3;32 to play and Fort Lee could get no closer.

“I don't really care about scoring points. My job on this team is to rebound and play defense,” said Kinzler, a 6-foot-2 sophomore. “We had some tough loses this year, we had two overtime losses in our first two games and we had a tough one against Pascack Hills. We needed to win this game if we want to make the county tournament and that is one of our goals.”

The win was the third straight for Rutherford and it improved to 6-3 on the season.

“This was pretty much a must win if we want to get into the county tournament. We are on the road again on Tuesday [against Eastern Christian] and we still have a good Manchester team before the cutoff,” said Cavanagh. “We have to take them one at a time because it would be a shame if we stumbled after a good win like this.”

Darren Pannella and Rutherford have won three straight to get to 6-3 on the season.

Rutherford dominated the interior scoring with McGorry, Kinzler and Willis (11 points) combining to score 47 points. Darren Pannella, the Bulldogs' point guard, was slowed by foul trouble, but still finished with 9. Brian Kelly did much of the ball-handling when Pannella was on the bench and added 7 points to round out the scoring for the Bulldogs.

Fort Lee was led by its backcourt as Ford (18 points), Mushandu (16 points) and Gentile (10 points) all finished in double digits followed by DeShaun Washington's 5-point night. Michaele, Tyler Sanders and Muni Hajjij each made one field goal apiece for the Bridgemen, who fell to 7-4 on the season.

With four games left before the Jambo cutoff, Fort Lee will need to win three of them to automatically qualify. In the meantime, they are still unbeaten in the Big North Conference – American Division and have plenty to play for.

“We have stuff to play for, but when you have the kind of team that we have we can't keep putting ourselves in the position to have to battle back,” said Ziemba. “We are not a huge team, we are not a great rebounding team and when you play the way we do, we only have so many runs in us in any game. We still have good things in front of us. We need three out of four to get in the Jambo and we have a chance at a league title. We just have to go back to work.”

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