To the poster who asked where the roundup from Wednesday's games are, I have attached the link below:
http://c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080228/SPORTS03/802280372/1013
To no surprise of mine, it has been an enormously successful first three days of the state tournament for local teams.
The area has only had seven teams (Plainfield, Mount St. Mary, South Hunterdon, Governor Livingston, North Plainfield, Franklin and Montgomery) eliminated, and North Plainfield and Franklin each lost to another local team (Somerville and Piscataway, respectively).
I attended three games so far (Montgomery vs. South Brunswick, South Plainfield vs. Union Hill and Somerville vs. North Plainfield) and must say I was wowed by South Plainfield's performance. I had not seen the Tigers play since late December and was surprised at just how good some of their lesser known players have gotten.
The Somerville vs. North Plainfield game was as good of game as I've seen all year for the following reasons:
1) The atmosphere was great. Both team's students and fans did a great job showing up and being loud.
2) It was competitive from start to finish, no big leads.
3) It was well-officiated. The free-throw disparity was huge, but that is not the officials' problem here. It was a result of Somerville attacking the basket and North Plainfield settling for too many jumpers.
This is a candidate for my "Game of the Year" in the postseason wrap-up.
Have you seen any really good games? Or really good plays? Tell me about them. I will be at Watchung Hills-Piscataway on Friday night and Saturday remains TBA.
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2 comments:
Atmosphere was great at Ville/NP, but it was nothing compared to the Ville/Weequahic game. I'm pretty sure Weequahic brought their entire student body and the game was decided at the buzzer. In the final 10 or so seconds, there were somewhere on the order of 3-4 consecutive turnovers resulting from both teams being unable to inbound the ball in 5 seconds. One of the plays the Weequahic girl tried to hit the ball off the Ville player guarding the inbound, but the Somerville girl (I forget who it was, either Kaschak or Black I think), caught it! It was an amazing play and one the student section loved. And of course the most unlikely of heroes (Taylor Boosmann) came through with a huge rebound and putback that marked the victory.
In many ways it was very similar to last night's game, but all of the Ville parents agree this was Coach Swan's best win in his tenure at Somerville. The team has finally come together and is, as you've said, attacking the basket. If they can do this against Rumson, they might stand a chance. If they revert back to their old habits of standing around, it'll be a rout.
"All of the Ville parents agree this was Coach Swan's best win in his tenure at Somerville ". A first round win in the state playoffs? Guess these parents were not in attendance when Swan and the Ville beat Shore Regional last year to send the program to the Group 2 State Final. That place was jam packed and if I remember correctly the Ville was losing and came back down the stretch to pull it out. There was a boys game right after it and the boys were playing Shore Regional as well so the place was nuts. The Weequahic win was nice but let's not go overboard with saying that was Coach Swan's best win.
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