Greeley’s Late Run Ends a Drought Against the Foxes
Up until the final three minutes last Tuesday evening, neither Will Frieder nor Jeremy Block had scored a single basket for the Horace Greeley basketball team in its rivalry game against Fox Lane.
But Frieder connected on a huge 3-pointer with 2:45 remaining to break the last tie of the night and Block soon made a steal and went coast to coast for a layup. Those two key plays ignited a 12-1 game-closing spurt that carried the host Quakers to a 60-49 victory over the Foxes.
“When you haven’t beaten a team in five years and the team is a rival two or three miles away, it’s a big-time win and I’m happy to be a part of it,” said Quakers first-year head coach Felix Nicodemo shortly after Greeley had beaten the Foxes for the first time since Matt Townsend was patrolling the paint. “The atmosphere was absolutely nuts, the fan support, the community support. The kids were ready to go tonight and they stepped up.”
Greg Karr scored 18 of his game-high 22 points in the first half, while Brandon Gecaj finished with 20, but it was the Quakers’ switch to a zone press late in the first quarter that seemed to change the complexion of the contest and provided the biggest spark to their fifth consecutive win.
“It slowed us down a little bit,” conceded Fox Lane coach Mike Tomassi about the Quaker pressure. “Our spacing wasn’t great on it. It’s just we don’t pay attention to details. And if you don’t make shots, it makes it tough. They just outworked us, simple as that. It was heart and hustle. We didn’t bring it tonight.”
Fox Lane had opened up a 15-8 lead before Karr nailed a 3-pointer with 20 seconds left in the first quarter. An 18-foot jumper by the Foxes’ Jordan Alvarado beat the buzzer and left Greeley trailing 17-11 after the opening eight minutes. But the Quakers then proceeded to score the first 10 points of the second period, starting with Karr’s fast-break lefty layup and then his 3-point shot from the right wing on another break.
When Fox Lane closed to within 27-26 with 50 seconds remaining in the half on a layup by Devin Hunter, who finished with a team-high 13 points, it was Karr who answered 20 seconds later by draining a 3-pointer from the left corner, his fifth of the game. The Quakers left the court at halftime with a 30-27 edge.
“Whoa, he kept us in that game,” said Nicodemo about the hot-shooting Karr. “You know, we were struggling a little defensively, man-to-man, and he stepped up. He kept us in it when they were making a little run.”
Back-to-back baskets by Josh Olsen and J R Trumpbour midway through the third quarter gave the Foxes a 35-34 advantage, but the lead changed hands four more times the rest of the period. A put-back bucket by Hunter with seven seconds left enabled Fox Lane to take a 41-40 lead with a quarter to go.
Gecaj, a senior captain, had scored eight of the Quakers’ 10 points in the third quarter. But when the final period got underway, he really provided Greeley with a lift, scoring three straight baskets in the first 85 seconds to give the Quakers a five-point cushion.
“Yeah, Brandon Gecaj stepped up,” said Nicodemo. “I’m very proud of him. He works very hard and he had it going tonight. He hit some big-time shots.”
But Fox Lane then responded with a 7-2 spurt, tying the game at 48 apiece on Xander Alvarado’s 3-pointer from the right corner with just over three minutes remaining on the clock. Unfortunately for the Foxes, their only other point the rest of the way came from an Olsen free throw with 1:34 to go. The Quakers finished the game with their 12-1 spurt that started with the big plays from Frieder and Block.
Frieder had actually been out of the lineup for three weeks with an ankle injury before his return against the Foxes.
“I wanted to use him in spurts since it was his first game back,” said Nicodemo.”He came down and turned the ball over. Then he made up for it next play. He hit a dead-ball three that was a really big shot. It was one of the keys to our win.”
So too, of course, was the steal and subsequent layup by Block that came 30 seconds later and stretched the Greeley lead to 53-48.
“One of the keys to the game is to get into the passing lanes,” added Nicodemo. “We didn’t necessarily get into them as much as I would’ve liked, but Jeremy Block, senior captain, got into the passing lane, came up with a big-time steal to go the other way and totally took the momentum towards us.”
For the Foxes’ Tomassi, the final minutes turned out to be extremely frustrating.
“It’s disappointing,” he said. “You know, any time it’s a rivalry game, any time you lose to Greeley, it’s disappointing. It’s been a long time since we’ve lost to them. Credit to them. They played hard. They definitely wanted it more. If we don’t make shots, if we don’t play hard, if we don’t defend, it doesn’t matter who we’re playing. It’s gonna be hard for us to win games.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
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