Wednesday, January 16, 2013

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

JP Zacharia scored all three of his points and had both of his blocked shots in the final 39 seconds as Ramapo pulled out a 37-35 win at Tenafly on Tuesday to improve to 8-3.

TENAFLY – There was one possession in particular that summed up the whole game. It started with just over four minutes to go in a low-scoring first half and Tenafly had chance after extend a lead. Tenafly took a shot and missed,, then Steve Sobo got the offensive rebound. Tenafly shot again, missed again and Steve Sobo grabbed the offensive rebound. That same scenario happened two more times with Sobo as the rebounder and then two more times with other Tigers hitting the glass. But while the hustle was to be applauded, the bottom like was that Tenafly had seven chances to extend its lead on a single trip down the floor, it never did and Ramapo, as it would all night long, hung in there until it could get a couple of shots of its own to fall.

Tenafly led for all but 2:23 of the first half that the game was tied at 7, it led by as many as nine in the second quarter and for all of the third quarter. But right when the finish line was in sight, Ramapo put together a late sprint and stole the decision at the tape in a 37-35 win on Tuesday night.

“A win is a win in this league and the way things were going tonight, we'll take whatever we could get. It was not the prettiest, but it didn't have to be,” said Joe Sandberg, the former Bergen Catholic standout in hoops and football now in his first year as Ramapo's head coach. “Tenafly is a well-coached team and plays great team defense, but I preach to our kids that we are going to fight to the end and we needed every second to get there tonight.”

Steve Sobo led Tenafly with 9 points and 11 rebounds, four of them on the offensive end on a single possession.

While both teams are well-organized defensively and don't give up many easy shots, that only explains half of the reason for such a low-scoring varsity boys basketball game. Tenafly was just 1 for 17 from behind the 3-point line and Ramapo had 23 turnovers in the game. It seemed like Tenafly was one made basket away all night long, but it never came and Ramapo was left hanging around until it could make up for a choppy offensive performance in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter.

“We had it, we just didn't finish it. Credit to Ramapo because they kept fighting and battling, but we had some breakdowns defensively and we did not shoot the ball particularly well. We were 1 of 17 from 3,” said Tenafly head coach Joe Finizio. “We were right there and we should have closed it out a little bit better.”

The Tigers started well enough as they scored the first five points of the game before Ramapo came back to forge a 7-7 tie at the end of the first quarter. Tenafly then put together the only semblance of an offensive rhythm by either team as it ripped off nine straight points to start the second quarter. Sobo scored on back-to-back possessions and his jumper from the wing off a drive-and-dish by Amit Yona gave Tenafly its largest lead of the night at 16-7 with 5:22 to go in the first half.

Freshman Matt Latka responded with with a 3-pointer for Ramapo, which pulled to within 21-17 by halftime and to within a single point at 25-24 when Latka hit a 3-pointer from the wing with 5:47 to go in the third. Latka, who was the MVP of the Red Raider Holiday Tournament, has had an instant impact on the Green Raiders after opting for his hometown at the last minute.

Ramapo's Matt Grassi finished with a game-high 16 points.

“It's been great the way it has turned out. I was going to Don Bosco [Prep]. But Coach Sandberg really persuaded me to come here,” said Latka, who made three of Ramapo's four 3-pointers. “It's been an adjustment for me because the speed of the game is a lot higher, the intensity is higher and the tempo is so much faster, but I am getting used to it and trying to find ways to help this team any way I can.”

Tenafly led 27-24 before taking over for that marathon possession that ate up all but nine seconds of the final 4:03 of the third quarter, but it ended without without points and the teams were scoreless through the first 3:22 of the fourth quarter before the game changed significantly with one whistle.

With 4:48 to go in the fourth quarter, Tenafly, which played with just five players to that point, its rotation shortened by one with the absence of the injured Shachar Zeplovitch, lost starting center Aristotle Zigouras to his fifth personal foul. That opened up more space for Matt Grassi, Ramapo's center who was already carrying the Raiders offensively. After Tenafly went up 31-25 when Sobo hit both ends of the one-and-one with 3:20 to play, Grassi scored on Ramapo's next two possessions, the second on a pretty spin move through the lane.

“Since June when we started practicing, we have been stressing defense, defense, defense. We work hard at it and if you play good defense sometimes it can lead to an ugly game,” said Grassi. “We've won games with our defense all year, that is how we play and tonight our defense kept us in there until we could make a couple of shots.”

Amit Yona scored 8 points for Tenafly, which fell to 5-7.

Ramapo stayed close enough so that when Alex Gitkin made his only field goal of the night, a 3-pointer from the corner with 1:44 to go in the game, the Raiders trailed by just a single point at 33-32. Kyle Hioki hit a short fade-away jumper to put Tenafly back up by three, Latka scored on a drive to the basket to cut it back to one point and the final 40 seconds of the game belonged to JP Zacharia.

A Pat O'Hagan steal and Mike Gostkowski lead pass set up Zacharia for a flip shot on the fastbreak that gave Ramapo its first lead of the game at 36-35 with 39 seconds to play. Zacharia then had two blocked shots on the same Tenafly shooter on the next possession and then got up the floor and was fouled on the fastbreak after a Tommy Gordon steal robbed Tenafly of a third shot at the go-ahead score. Zacharia made one of two to put his team up 37-35 with 9 seconds left, and Tenafly turned the ball over in the front court before it could get off a last shot.

“On that defensive possession I closed out on the shooter in the corner and they grabbed an offensive rebound right behind me. He caught the ball in my face and I just blocked it. It bounced right back to him and I blocked it again,” said Zacharia. “That felt so good. On the first one I was scared I was going to pick up a foul, but on the second one I had the adrenalin rush and I didn't even care at that point.”

Grassi (16 points) and Latka (11 points) were the only two double digit scorers in the game and the rest of Ramapo's points were shared between Zacharia and Gitkin, who scored 3 apiece, and one field goal each for Gordon and Stefan Skoneberg.

Freshman Matt Latka scored 11 points for Ramapo and made three of its four 3-pointers.

After a tough 2011-2012 campaign, Ramapo has bounced back in a big way. The Green Raiders improved to 8-3 on the season and are in line for a spot in the Bergen County Jamboree all though there are no guarantees with a tough schedule coming up.

“Our goal is just to get better and play hard every day. Coming in I wasn't really worried about what went on last year and I didn't want the kids thinking about that either. We started clean just like every other team,” said Sandberg. “The kids have worked extremely hard to get where they are and put themselves in a position to considered [for the Jambo], but we just have to keep working. That is the only way to get there.”

Sobo led Tenafly with 9 points, Hioki and Yona finished with 8 apiece, Yaniv Cohen had 6 and Zigouras had two field goals for the Tigers, who fell to a deceiving 5-7 on the season. After losing Chris Orozco, the program's all-time leading scorer, to graduation, Tenafly might have been expected to fall off the cliff, but instead it has been competitive just about every time out against one of the toughest schedules in North Jersey. In one week early in the season, the Tigers played Teaneck, Hackensack and St. Joseph Regional, winning the latter.

“We have been right there in every game with the exception of the Hackensack game and the Old Tappan game, which kind of got away from us. It's just about learning to win and learning to play together a little bit better,” said Finizio. “We'll try to learn from the mistakes made tonight and move on and get ready for Bergenfield. That's all we can do.”

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