Friday, February 1, 2008

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Rhonda Shariff scored five straight points late in the fourth quarter to put Cliffside in position to knock off Ridgefield Park, 35-34, and qualify for the state tournament on the number at 8-8.

CLIFFSIDE PARK -- After playing 31 combined games this season and after beating each other up for the better part of 30 minutes on Thursday night, the postseason hopes for both the Cliffside Park and Ridgefield Park girls basketball teams boiled down to a high stakes free throw shooting contest with a spot in the state tournament as first prize.

In the final 1:45 of the fourth quarter, Ridgefield Park had five free throw opportunities and made just one. Over that same span Cliffside Park was awarded six free throws and made three, including one by Kim Shaw with 13.8 seconds left to play that broke a tie score.

“My nerves...I was so nervous, I was shaking,” said Shaw, one of CP’s two senior starters. “After I missed the first one I was just saying to myself, ‘You have to make this. You have to make this.’ We had to win this game, especially because this is my senior year.”

Cliffside lived through two missed Ridgefield Park free throws with six seconds left and two missed shots, the last one as the final buzzer sounded, to pull out a 36-35 win. Now at 8-8 on the season, Cliffside qualified for the North 2, Group 2 state tournament on the number.

Gianna Scerbo hit a free throw to draw Ridgefield Park even at 34 with 21 seconds left to play.

“We are 8-8 and we are going to the state tournament. It was not easy getting there as you could see tonight, but it has been fun and it feels good getting there,” said Cliffside Park head coach Larry Pinto, who has his team in the states for the third straight year. “We expected to be in the state tournament, but we certainly did not expect it to be on the route we took to get to this point.”

The game was a defensive struggle from the outset with the teams combining to score just eight points in the first quarter that ended with Cliffside holding a 6-2 lead. Ridgefield Park held a two point lead, 14-12, at halftime and looked to be in good shape when Mary Haines scored six straight points to open the third quarter.

Haines, who lead all scorers in the game with 11 points, scored twice inside off of assists from Courtney Hatton and once off the offensive glass to give the Lady Scarlets a 20-12 advantage, a sizable edge with points being so hard to come by.

And it took a long time for Cliffside to catch up. The Lady Raiders crept to within 26-23 at the end of the third quarter and finally took their first second half lead when Maria Suarez banked in a jumper from the wing to give her team a 29-28 lead with 4:33 to go in the game.

Kim Shaw, one of Cliffside's two senior starters, made the free throw with 13.8 seconds left that provided the winning point.

Up until the final minute-plus, Ridgefield Park had been money from the foul line, converting 10 of 12 from the stripe, a streak that started in the second quarter and lasted until Haines made two from the line to move the Scarlets back out in front, 30-29, with 4:00 to play.

RP extended the lead to three points when Brittany Margiotta’s steal led to Courtney Hatton’s assist on Liz Quimby’s fastbreak basket. But after that, every break and every big shot went the way of Cliffside Park.

The Raiders tied the score when freshman Denise Hadzovic drew the defense on a drive to the basket and kicked the ball to Rhonda Shariff on the wing and she nail a three-pointer, the first and only triple of the game for either team, with a hand in her face to knot the score 32. The next time down the floor Shariff made both ends of a one-and-one opportunity to put Cliffside up 34-32.

“I just wanted to make that three-pointer. We were down and it was a really important time in the game,” said Shariff, Cliffside’s junior point guard. “We weren’t scoring a lot of points, but we were playing good defense, we just had to pick it up on offense. This was a wild game and it was a great win because if we didn’t win it would have made the rest of the season kind of pointless.”

Mary Haines scored a game-high 11 points for Ridgefield Park.

The score stayed right there until Hatton and Gianna Scerbo made a free throw each on consecutive possessions. Scerbo’s point, which bounded high off the rim and off the top of the back board before falling through, tied the game at 34 with 21 seconds to play. But Shaw’s free throw broke the tie and everything Ridgefield Park threw up in the final 14 seconds bounced away. The game ended with the ball rolling loose in the lane after RP’s final shot rolled off the front rim.

Ridgefield Park had an independent game all set up for Saturday to give it a chance to get to .500 and qualify for the state tournament had it been able to pull off the win in Cliffside, but instead the Scarlets are going to have to settle for playing the role of spoiler in their final seven regular season games.

“This has got to be our fifth or sixth loss of the season by two or three points. For some reason, we just can’t get it done in the end,” said Ridgefield Park head coach Scott Papetti. “It was missed foul shots, missed opportunities at the end. We were up 8 in the third quarter and we let them get back in the game. We succumbed to the pressure, the press, the crowd, the announcer; just everything started getting on us.”

While Ridgefield Park’s lone remaining goal for the season is to finish at .500 and send it four seniors (Chrissy Deluca, Nicole Santuoso, Hatton and Scerbo) out on a winning note, Cliffside has the state tournament to prepare for.

Cliffside freshman Denise Hadzovic chipped in with two fourth quarter assists.

Shaw and Shariff each scored 10 points to lead Cliffside Park, while Kat Renteria and Suarez each made two field goals. Renteria, a senior, scored all four of her points in the fourth quarter to give her team a lift and the Raiders also contributions from Hadzovic, who had three assists and as many points, and Daniella Jurisic and Ivana Spadina.

Although the Raiders might face a powerhouse like Rutherford or Hanover Park in the first round of the state tournament, it certainly beats the alternative.

“We’ve had a lot of injuries that we have had to deal with, we’ve lost a few players along the way, but we’ve worked hard and we have been able to maintain our composure and battle to a .500 record at the state tournament cutoff,” said Pinto, who is in his fourth season as Cliffside’s head coach. “To be in is better than not to be in. I wish it wasn’t this stressful, but that is what coaching is all about.”

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