By Jim Stout
MaxPreps.com
When the New York Archdiocesan playoffs begin this week, everyone will start anew with a clean slate. The regular season will mean nothing.
That's the theory, anyway.
But there was no denying what happened in the CHSAA regular-season finale last Friday night. Portents were everywhere.
Rice High, ranked No. 1 in the state in Class AA and No. 9 in the nation by MaxPreps, closed out its league schedule at 14-0 by whipping New York Class AA's fifth-ranked team, Christ the King, by 68-49.
After graduating three blue chip stars from last year's city championship team, Rice (21-2 overall) has not missed a beat this season. The Raiders only two losses in 2006-07 have been to No. 2 Boys & Girls High of Brooklyn (by two points) and Norcross, Ga. (by seven). Norcross is ranked No. 14 nationally.
"We believed we could do it. I know a lot of people thought we couldn't because we didn't have a lot of experience," Rice's Chris Fouch told the New York Daily News.
"Last year, we had a lot of leadership from our seniors and we learned a lot from that. We knew what we had going. We were just waiting for everyone else to see."
Fouch finished with 17 points.
Rice used full-court, man-to-man pressure to keep Christ the King's Erving Walker and Malik Boothe under wraps.
"The whole plan was to stop Erving," said Rice's Lamont Jones, who marked the Florida-bound junior point guard. "We knew they couldn't win if Erving wasn't getting the ball and setting them up. So we focused on stopping him."
Walker scored 13 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter, when Christ the King (19-3) made a run and cut what was an 18-point third-quarter deficit down to 10.
"They (Rice) came out with more intensity than we did; we couldn't match it," Walker said. "By the time we did, we had too big a hole to get out of."
Railsplitters Win Brooklyn Borough Championship
Number 9 Lincoln High captured the Brooklyn Borough championship at St. Francis College with a 75-74 win over No. 2 Boys & Girls, getting a basket from Darwin Ellis with 5.9 seconds left in regulation to win it.
With the victory, Lincoln will most likely be the top seed in the PSAL playoffs, which begin on Feb. 27, after the winter break. Lincoln and Boys & Girls split their regular-season meetings and are favored to play again in the PSAL final next month at Madison Square Garden.
Boys & Girls coach Ruth Lovelace would welcome the challenge of a third meeting with Lincoln, particularly after her team didn't get the job done defensively.
"We made some mistakes defensively," Lovelace told the Daily News. "Especially at the end."
On the final Lincoln possession, Boys & Girls double-teamed Vance Kelley, who'd already hit three 3-pointers. Lincoln sophomore Lance Stephenson, who scored 15 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter to erase an 11-point deficit for the Railsplitters, had the ball at the top of the key and saw Ellis wide open in the corner.
"Vance was covered and Buddha (Ellis) was open. I knew Buddha could hit (it), I just told him to knock it down," said Stephenson. "I knew it was good."
Notre Dame of Utica Jump-Starts Its Season
Notre Dame of Utica, No. 12 in the state in Class A and the defending Section 3 champs, hadn't played a game in two weeks entering the 2007 sectional playoffs last Saturday.
The inactivity didn't matter one bit.
The third-seeded Jugglers, who struggled at the end of the regular season, opened their title defense with a 76-42 rout of Homer in a first-round game.
"We really had to come out and win like we did today, just to set the tone," 6-foot-4 senior center Steve Campbell told the Utica Observer-Dispatch. "I don't think it was about us being rusty. We just had to come out here and play hard."
After struggling to overtime victories over Whitesboro and New Hartford, Notre Dame lost by 20 points Vernon-Verona-Sherrill during the final week of its regular season.
"We just needed to play," said Notre Dame coach Mike Durr. "We had been looking at the same faces for the last two weeks and I thought we got stuck in the mud a little bit early, but from the second quarter on I thought we played well."
Fairport, Rush-Henrietta Play It Again
Rush-Henrietta, ranked No. 17 in Class AA, won its second game in three tries this season against Rochester-area rival and No. 15 Fairport in a 62-51 victory in the finals of the Monroe County Tournament Elite Bracket.
The two could well square off again for a fourth time in the upcoming Section 5 tournament.
"That was a big win for us because two weeks ago we lost to (Fairport)," R-H's Dezerick Brooks told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. "We wanted to get in our house and beat them."
Rush-Henrietta prevailed after sophomore Dane Miller scored 21 points and pulled in 19 rebounds, and Ozell Franklin produced 18 points.
Brooks added six points, including a key 3-pointer that pushed R-H's 50-48 lead to five points with 2:02 remaining. The shot was part of a 9-0 run by the Royal Comets. The spurt was triggered by one of Franklin's four 3-pointers.
"When Ricky (Reed) passed the ball to me it felt like he had a lot of confidence in me," said Brooks, a 6-foot-2 sophomore forward. "I just shot it. I don't really shoot 3s like that."
Costs to Cut Down On Use of Rochester War Memorial
Whoever winds up advancing in the Section 5 tournament in the coming weeks, their chances of playing at the hallowed Community War Memorial will be greatly diminished.
That's because higher operating costs are reducing the number of sectional games being scheduled at the War Memorial, affectionately known as "the Big House." The venue has been a basketball Mecca in the Rochester area for 50 years.
"We're looking at other venues," said Jack Purificato, committee chairman for Section 5's boys' basketball tournament. "I'm still holding the championships there, but it gets harder and harder every year."
The removal of the Class BB boys semifinal games on Feb. 27 from the arena caught players and coaches by surprise.
"It's a shame that's happening," Al Nash, boys basketball coach at Freddie Thomas High, told the Democrat & Republican. "You wait all season for a chance to play at the Big House. Now you're shooting down dreams of kids who have been hearing about the history of playing there.
"Not everyone gets a chance to play at the War Memorial."
Southern Tier Titles Goes to Binghamton
Binghamton won its first Southern Tier Athletic Conference championship in seven years by routing Seton Catholic Central, 71-49, in the STAC final before a crowd of 2,000 at SUNY Binghamton.
Senior forward Azim Griffin topped Binghamton scorers for a second-consecutive night. His 19 points were backed by five teammates with six or more.
"This was important. We needed this," Pats forward Brian Johnson told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. "A lot of people doubted Binghamton."
"(Binghamton) is very athletic, very skilled and even more so in the open floor," said Seton Catholic coach Chris Sinicki said. "They're talented, and once they got it rolling, there was no letdown, like maybe what I saw (Friday) night (in the semis)."They smelled blood, and they got it."
Newburgh Flexes its AA Muscles
In a battle of Class AA vs. A powers, Newburgh (No. 8 in AA) handed Cornwall (No. 9 in Class A) a 87-66 defeat, though the highly-anticipated game at Cornwall was up for grabs through three quarters.
Evan Lassic scored 19 points for Newburgh, highlighted by his three 3-pointers early in the fourth quarter that broke open the game. Curtis Dieudonne added 16 points, with six coming during a four-minute span when everything could have fallen apart.
Newburgh (17-1) also survived the ejection in the second quarter of its coach, Luke Pereira.
"That was big," Lassic told the Middletown Times-Herald-Record. "We had to get our composure back. Coach Dino (assistant coach Frank Dinnocenzio) told us to calm down, that we had to win it for Coach Pereira, and that's what we did."
Cornwall (18-1) now looks to go out and win the Class A Section 9 tournament.
Greeley Takes Sectional Opener
Fifth-seeded Horace Greeley of Chappaqua won its Section 1 Class AA opener as Max Strand hit four consecutive baskets down the stretch, allowing the Quakers to score a narrow 65-62 win over 12th-seeded Mahopac.
"We haven't really had many close games," Greeley guard Jason Taub (23 points) told the Journal News. "We all know it will be all over with one loss, so we really want to keep it going."
Greeley blew a pair of double-digit leads when Mahopac scrambled the game with a triangle-and-two zone. It was a two-possession game when Strand found a seam in the defense along the baseline and began stringing baskets together.
The mini run gave the Quakers (18-3 and ranked 16th in Class AA) needed breathing room.
"I had a pretty quiet game for three quarters," said Strand, who scored 11 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter. "I finally started to feel it a little, and it's a good thing because it really helped my team."
Jim Stout is the MaxPreps.com Master Photographer for the Massachusetts/Rhode Island area and a Northeast Region columnist. He may be reached at 203-563-2297 or at j.stout@jmstout.org.