Monday, December 31, 2007

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Sara Ely hit a three-pointer with 5:32 to go in the third quarter that broke the last tie of the game and gave Pascack Valley the lead for good in a 48-41 win over Old Tappan in the final of the Joe Poli Holiday Tournament on Sunday night.

HILLSDALE -- Trailing by 10 points with less than three minutes to go in the first half, the Old Tappan girls basketball team was in the unenviable position of having to play catch up against Pascack Valley, which has proven that is knows how to close out opponents, even quality opponents, during its 7-0 start to the season. Old Tappan had its work cut out for it on the road and in a packed gym in the final of the Joe Poli Holiday Tournament on Sunday night.

It took just about five minutes of game clock and more than a little hustle for the Golden Knights to get back in the game, but they did manage to get back even on a pretty offensive set. Sam Sinatra fed Lisa Jaris in the post, Jaris spit the ball back out when the double team came and Sinatra made a long jumper with her foot on the three-point line that tied things up at 33 with 5:52 left in the third quarter.

But after all that, it took just 20 seconds for Pascack Valley to regain control. The next time down the floor, senior Sara Ely took the ball on the wing, pushed a dribble to the left to create space, pulled up and hit a three-pointer that kicked off the decisive 9-0 run that led to the Indians’ 48-41 win.

Lisa Jaris scored a team-high 13 points for Old Tappan, which fell to 5-1 on the season after the loss in the Joe Poli Tournament final.

Ely’s shot was the dagger, but it was not forced and it came within the flow of an offense that was effective all night in not wasting open opportunities. The Indians were efficient and Ely made three three-pointers on the way to a game-high 20 points.

“When I start to think that I need to shoot, that is when things don’t go well, so we kind of just tried to let everything flow because when it doesn’t, you start forcing things and start having problems,” said Ely. “We just had to capitalize on all of the opportunities that we had and I thought we did that pretty well.”

That was especially true in a nearly flawless stretch of basketball that started when Ely drove the basket, made a layup and the free throw for the conventional three-point play that gave Pascack Valley a 13-12 lead and wiped out Old Tappan’s last advantage of the game with 2:34 to go in the first quarter.

That was the start of another 9-0 run that gave PV a 20-12 lead when Terry Ely corralled a loose rebound and knocked down a jumper from the foul line for the first points of the second quarter.

“The first quarter, that is about as well as we can play against a team this good,“ said PV head coach Jeff Jasper. “I thought we were superb."

Terry Ely was outstanding in the first half. She scored 10 of her 12 points in the first two quarters and her driving layup with 2:45 to go in the first half gave Pascack Valley is largest lead of the night at 26-16. There are three Ely sisters in PV’s starting lineup and they combined for 36 of the Indians’ 48 points with Maggie Ely making two field goals. Rebecca Lynch accounted for the other 12 PV points.

Terry Ely scored 10 of her 12 points in the first half and also threw in four assists to help lead PV to a perfect 7-0 start to the season.

“The one thing about all three Elys is that they just know how to play. There is a bloodline there with mom and dad that just says ‘We know how to play,” said Jasper, who also coached the Ely matriarch, then known as Laura Daugherty. “They take direction well, they do great things.”

Old Tappan is a team that is also capable of great things and it got back in the game with an 11-2 run to close the second quarter. Jaris got it started with a conventional three-point play and Chanel Van Dyke then went on a personal 6-0 spurt when she made three straight baskets, the last of them a long two-pointer that got the Golden Knights to within 26-25.

The teams traded baskets in the finals seven seconds of the first half with Lynch finishing a hard take to the basket and Jaris getting a put back just before the buzzer to keep Old Tappan within a point at the break.

Old Tappan finally pulled even at 33 with the inside-out set between Sinatra and Jaris, but Sara Ely’s three-pointer put PV in front to stay and the Indians then got a driving basket from Maggie Ely, a baseline jumper from Lynch and a layup from Sara Ely after a pretty bounce pass from Terry Ely, who found her older sister cutting to the basket. Lynch’s final basket of the night gave PV a 46-38 lead after three quarters and the Indians did not allow Old Tappan enough possessions in the fourth quarter to get much closer than that.

Chanel Van Dyke had 10 points for Old Tappan, including three straight baskets that brought the Knights to within one point late in the first half.

The teams combined for just five points in the final quarter as Pascack Valley ran a ball control offense that would have made former Princeton head coach Pete Carill proud.

“If we had more touches in the fourth quarter we would have scored more points, but they just did a great job of controlling the game the whole fourth quarter,” said Old Tappan head coach Brian Dunn. “I think it was with about six minutes they went into a real deliberate offense, not so much a stall, but they just worked real hard in passing and catching and making our big kids come away from the basket.”

Jaris led Old Tappan with 13 points, she pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds and played her usual physical game under the basket, but Pascack Valley sent a second defender every time she touched the ball and did a good job of keeping Jaris, and the Knights in general, off the free throw line. Jaris was a perfect 3 for 3 from the stripe, but those were the only three free throws that Old Tappan earned in the game.

Van Dyke scored 10 points, Sinatra scored seven of her nine points in the first quarter to help the Knights get off to a fast start and sophomore Alex Radetzky made two three-pointers to finish with six points for Old Tappan. Alexa Pensabene had a three-pointer and was the only bench player from either side to score.

“It was a great experience and it was a good atmosphere to play in. The tough part will be coming back and playing in pretty much an empty gym the next [game] we play,” said Dunn, whose team fell to 5-1 with the loss. “These games are fun and exciting, but really in the grand scheme of things it is not that important in terms of what we are doing for the season. We learned a lot about our team and the level we can compete at and we just have to move on.”

Rebecca Lynch scored 12 points, including the final two points of the third quarter that gave PV a 46-38 lead.

Pascack Valley improved to 7-0 with the win and proved that it could play a possession by possession game against a bigger team and come out with a win in addition to the up-tempo, we’ll-take-more-shots-than-you approach the Indians used to win their first six games.

“Sometimes you have to play whatever hand you are dealt and we know from our experience with Old Tappan that it is too often one-and-out because they cover the glass so well. They are physical, they are well coached, they are talented, they are athletic, they are just really good,” said Jasper. “For us it was a matter of executing. The fourth quarter was a matter of ball control because their physical ability, we can’t match their physicality. At that time it was a matter of the clock being our best friend.”

CONSOLATION GAME:
RUTHERFORD 56, ST. MARY'S 40
Rutherford bounced back from its first loss of the season to Old Tappan in the semifinals to knock off St. Mary's, its improved in-town rival, to grab the third place trophy at the Joe Poli Tournament. Rutherford overcame foul trouble to senior Jacki Mann, who sat for nearly 18 of the game's 32 minutes, and turned a relatively close game after three quarters into a comfortable win.

"It was frustating to be on the bench watching, but the most important thing was to just keep encouraging my teammates, because it helps them stay in the game," said Mann, who still finished with a game-high 20 points. "If they hear encouragement coming off the bench, they know it is going to be all right."

FOR ADDITIONAL COVERAGE, check out the Audio Report in the upper right hand corner of this page. The fifth clip in the playlist is an interview with Rutherford head coach Nick DiBari, who spoke with us about his team's ability to play without Mann for long stretches and still come away with a win.

DiBari also touched on what it meant for his program to beat St. Mary's in a game between two teams located in the same town and that are, geographically, not much more than one mile apart.

The final clip in the playlist is Jacki Mann talking about her team's mindset after it won two of the three games it played in arguably the toughest Holiday tournament in all of North Jersey.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

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