Sunday,
January 13, 2013
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Stefan Minic made seven 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 27 points for Passaic Valley, which improved to 7-4 with a 64-43 win over Christ the King on Sunday in Englewood. |
ENGLEWOOD – Stefan Minic needed to shoot more. Shawn Ulrich needed to demand the ball after fighting for position in the post. Jihaad Wright needed time to get the gist of varsity basketball as freshman point guard. Ian Hanley and Zack Damiano needed to make good decisions that led to easy baskets for teammates and not for the opposition going the other way in transition. All of these individual parts of the Passaic Valley boys basketball team were on the 'To do' list of Hornets head coach Rob Carcich, who has a knack for building teams in-season from work in progress to state tournament contender.
And it is starting to come together.
Minic hit seven 3-pointers, Ulrich, a 6-foot-6 sophomore, dominated in the low post and Wright made sure everyone got the touches they needed and Hanley and Damiano, along with Dan Cirrincione and Alex Pezzino, did all of the little things in a 64-43 win over Christ The King of Newark on Sunday at the Public vs. Private Challenge played at Dwight Morrow High School.
“There is a lot of minutiae in the game of basketball that makes you a good team and already we are starting to see some of that move to the positive for us. Just the way Shawn [Ulrich] is calling for the ball now instead of just getting to the spot. Jihaad [Wright] is not doing what he did last year in eighth grade rec ball, he is figuring out what it means to run a varsity team and Stef [Minic] is shooting. I have been screaming at him for the past two years to shoot and he is finally doing it. He had seven 3s today,” said Carcich. “We are still young and immature, but we are 1,000 times better than we were three weeks ago and I still think we have a lot more potential.”
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Yvens Monfleur, on of CTK's four freshman starters, finished with a team-high 21 points. |
It is also taking less time for Passaic Valley to make its adjustments in game situations. Against Christ the King, it took about 5 minutes and 17 seconds of the game clock. The Hornets missed 12 of their first 13 shots and fell behind 9-3, but when Hanley made a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 2:43 left in the opening quarter, there was a noticeable shift in confidence. Minic made 3s on consecutive possessions to give Passaic Valley the lead for good at 12-11 and Pezzino made one just before the buzzer to give the Hornets a 19-13 lead at the end of the first quarter.
Minic hit three second quarter 3-pointers and combined with Ulrich to score 19 of the Hornets 23 second quarter points. As they took over the game inside and out, Passaic Valley raced out to a 42-22 lead at the break.
“I started 0-for-4 but I beat it into myself that I was going to make the next 10. I got off to a slow start but I had to keep shooting,” said Minic, one of two returning starters from last year's team that made it to the North 1, Group 3 state sectional final. “Once I got the first one to go down and the second one right after it, I felt like everything shot took was going to go in and I wanted to keep that focus going.”
Minic hit his last two treys in a personal 6-0 spurt late in the third quarter as Passaic Valley stretched its lead to 54-29 heading into the fourth and it coasted home from there. With Hanley being the only senior in the starting lineup, PV is learning on the fly but has built a 7-4 record while doing it. Minic finished with a game-high 28 points, Ulrich finished with 15 points and 13 rebounds and Dan Cirrincione added 9 points off the bench. Hanley added 5 points, Pezzino and Wright each had 3 and Damiano's two fourth quarter free throws rounded out the scoring for Passaic Valley.
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Sophomore Shawn Ulrich had 15 points and 13 rebounds for PV. |
“We feel like we are getting better, but we know we have a long way to go if we want to make a real run in March and get to where we want to be,” said Ulrich. “We want to get to the section finals and we want to win it. That is what we are shooting for.”
While PV can be classified as a young team based on its returning varsity experience and the fact that it starts just one senior, the Hornets' relative youth is nothing compared to what is going on at Christ The King. That is a whole different story, and a good one.
In an era when parochial schools have closed by the dozens, especially those primarily supported by Catholic archdioceses, Christ The King has basically just opened. It first opened its doors for the 2006-07 school year and has had just two graduating classes. Christ the King is a member of the Christo Rey Network, meaning that its students go to school four days a week and work at internships on the fifth. With this model, corporate partners directly aid in the funding of education for the 250 or so students at the school in Newark's North Ward.
“We are a different type of Catholic school. The internships pay for a good part of the tuition, which means that we don't take that much money from the archdiocese and we don't have to worry too much about closing. There are 18 schools like ours in the country, but we are the only one in New Jersey,” said CTK head coach Duane Eason, a 1993 graduate of Hackensack High School who hopes that by building a successful basketball program, it will bring more exposure to the academic opportunities that the school could provide. “We struggle with recruiting students because the magnet schools are more well known academically. Our principal and our director feel like that if we can expand the athletic programs and they do better, then the recruitment of the students academically will get better. It's not easy to get recognized for science and math. It is easier to get recognized for basketball.”
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Zahir Newell had 7 points for Christ The King, which only opened its doors six years ago. |
It's a model of education that is in its infancy and the basketball team is even younger as there are zero juniors and zero seniors on the Knights' roster. Four of their starters against Passaic Valley – Zahir Newell, Edgar Carranza, Arthur Mitchell and Yvens Monfleury – are freshman and the fifth, Kenneth Jackson, is a sophomore.
Monfleury, a 6-foot-4 slasher, will help Christ The King attract attention to to the school as it won't be long before college recruiters arrive. All he is lacking as of now is experience and some physical strength. One we gets those attributes, and we will in the not too distant future, he is going to be a force. He scored 21 points to lead Christ The King against an organized Passaic Valley defense. Forty of the 43 points that CTK scored against PV came from freshman as Newell and Mitchell each added 7 points, Carranza had 5 and Jackson had 3 for the Knights, who fell to 2-6 on the season but are a competitive 2-3 in league play.
“We had one sophomore in the starting lineup today. We usually start five freshman but we were missing Marquis Tyrelle today, who has a back injury. We are just trying to play the games and learn. I was talking about some of the things that Passaic Valley was doing real well today as stuff that my team can kind of piggy-back off of because they play the game right,” said Eason. “We are playing in the lowest division in the Super Essex Conference, so all of this has not been so overwhelming and we have actually tried to go out and play tough non-conference games just to give them a little bit more of a taste.
“If we can win eight games or more and stay competitive throughout the season, I will be happy. We are talking about little kids here, they like to fool around a lot and I let them to a degree. There is no book on how to play varsity basketball with five freshman, so we'll do the best we can and continue to build.”
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