Wednesday, January 11, 2011

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Kate Brock scored a team-high 13 points for River Dell, which knocked off Pascack Valley, 37-32, on Thursday to pull into a four-way tie for first place in the Big North Patriot Division.

ORADELL – When visiting the River Dell gym for a girls basketball game over the past couple of seasons a program was not a necessity. The senior class of 2011 was a stable group and, along with Kate Brock, ate up many of the varsity minutes over a three-year stretch. So when River Dell played it first seven game at one under .500, it was as much do to with the Golden Hawks' need for time to adjust to their new personnel as it did with a difficult early season schedule.

“We did lose four seniors and four of our starting five,” said Kate Brock, a senior and 1,000-point scorer who is the lone returning starter for River Dell. “As a group w had never played together before in a varsity game. This is our whole JV team from last year up with us now and it was hard for us to get into it. It took us a little while, but I think we are there now.”

Where River Dell is now is back to .500 on the season at 4-4 and in a four-way tie for first place in the Big North Conference – Patriot Division after leading for all but 34 seconds in a 37-32 win over Pascack Valley on Tuesday night in Oradell.

“I told the girls in practice that this is the worst start to a season that we have ever had, but as bad as it was we were playing for first place tonight and if we got there we would have wins over two of the top contenders in Bergenfield and [Pascack] Valley going into Tenafly on Thursday,” said River Dell head coach Lou Wejnert. “This was the way we were supposed to be playing. We are back to playing great defense, protecting the ball and getting the ball to Kate and letting everybody else live off that to get open for jumpshots.”

Michelle Garay made four straight field goals in the fourth quarter to give PV its only lead.

That was really a microcosm of the game as Pascack Valley zoned up in order to be able to commit extra defenders to Brock in the low post and she took turns trying to find space for her own shots and trusting her teammates to make Pascack Valley to pay for its double and triple teams. In the game-opening 10-0 run that set the tone, Brock scored off the offensive glass, from the free throw line and from the block off a high post entry pass from Jordan Bastable. Casey Verrier made a three-pointer from the wing during the spurt and left Pascack Valley in a double-digit hole just 4:31 into the game.

Defensively, River Dell played its own zone but with a different focus and that was to cut down on dribble penetration lanes available to PV's Catherine Rodgers and to force the Indians to shoot themselves back in it through the outside shot. It was a struggle through the first half as PV made just four field goals in first two quarters, three by Rodgers and one by Michelle Garay, and trailed 12-6 after the first period and 19-10 at the intermission.

Even when Brock picked up her second foul with 6:20 to go in the second quarter and had to go to the bench for the rest of the half, the Hawks played PV to a 4-4 draw. Brock returned to start the third quarter and played the rest of the way without incident. When Verrier hit her second three-pointer of the night, River Dell stretched the lead back into double digits at 22-12 with 4:47 to go in the third quarter.

River Dell senior Jordan Bastable hit all 6 of her free throws in the final two minutes.

At that point, the game could have gone one of two ways. Either River Dell was going to coast home in a blowout or Pascack Valley, would make a run and the winningest program in the history or girls basketball in the State of New Jersey, to no one's surprise, chose the latter. The jumper from the wing that Garay made to close the third quarter scoring cut River Dell's lead 24-19 and it was just a warm-up for the shooting clinic that Garay would put on in the fourth.

After Kayla McGovern took the inbounds pass and drove straight to the hoop unimpeded to start the final period, Garay went on a tear. She scored four straight field goals in a personal 8-0 run that took Pascack Valley from down seven points to up by one in the span of 3:06. She scored on a second-chance short range jumper, on a step back jumper from the wing, from almost the same spot after Rodgers' drive and dish and again from the angle after taking a skip pass from Rodgers.

Garay's last bucket was a three-pointer and it gave Pascack Valley its first and only lead of the night at 27-26 with 3:51 remaining. It looked like River Dell had missed its chance to put PV away, but Brock has been waiting a long time for a chance to knock off the perennial power was not about to let the opportunity slip by.

“We have never beaten Pascack Valley in my four high school years and it's always been one of our goals to beat them,” said Brock, who will play volleyball next year at Stony Brook University. “We've lost to them in the counties, we've always lost to them in the league, so this was kind of our chance.”

Catherine Rodgers finished with 6 points for Pascack Valley.

Thirty-four seconds after River Dell relinquished its hard earned lead, it took it back on a conventional three-point play by Brock that kicked off a 7-0 run that put the game away. The Hawks were a perfect 7 of 7 from the free throw line in the final 3:17 and Bastable made all six of her attempts in the last 2:03 to help seal it.

“Coach wanted me to have the ball when it came down to free throws, so I just did what I had to do to get open,” said Bastable, a senior and the first player off the bench last year who has stepped into a much more vital role this season. “I played a lot of minutes last year, but I knew this year was going to be different for me this year. We need other players besides Kate to score and we all have to step up and help.”

River Dell got all of its points from its starting five as Brock led the way with 13 followed by Bastable's 10 and 8 from Verrier. McGovern made a pair of field goals and Amanda Flood's second quarter finish of a pick-and-roll with accounted for the rest of the points for the Hawks, who improved to 3-1 in league play. Garay had 17 points to lead all scorers and Rodgers had six for Pascack Valley, which fell to 3-1 in the league.

“We had four days to get ready for them and we used that time to work on learning where they wanted to shoot from and taking those spots away,” said Wejnert. “Our seniors are stepping up, our ball-handling was better and that let us run the spread [offense] late in the game and that was big because we forced them to foul. Then we made our free throws. It was an all-around good win and now we have a little bit of a good feeling going into Tenafly on Thursday.”

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