NEW YORK — The Cavaliers-Knicks game Wednesday night wasn’t billed as the “St. Benedict’s Prep Alumni Game,” but it easily could have been.
The two teams featured three players who competed under former St. Ben’s coach Dan Hurley in Knicks guard J.R. Smith and Cavs big men Samardo Samuels and Tristan Thompson.
Throw in former St. Patrick star Kyrie Irving and the game actually featured four players from the two North Jersey prep powerhouses.
Between them, the four players accounted for 44 points and 13 rebounds in the Knicks’ 120-103 victory. Samuels said all the Jersey players have the “same little swag…a little approach to things.”
“It really hit home to me how fortunate I have been to have coached so many special kids at St. Benedict’s,” Hurley, who was known as a taskmaster in the mold of his Hall of Fame father, St. Anthony coach Bob Hurley, told SNY.tv by text. “Four are currently in the NBA with a couple more on the way. Many kids are playing overseas or have started their professional life after basketball. So I’m proud of all of them.”
In addition to Smith, Samuels and Thompson, former St. Ben’s and Duke standout Lance Thomas was recently called up by the New Orleans Hornets and signed for the rest of the season. (Read more about Thomas here.)
“Lance is a hard worker,” said Samuels, now 23 and in his second year in the NBA. “Going to Duke for four years, winning a national championship to now being in the league. You know, that’s a tight little journey for Lance.”
Hurley, whose Wagner team begins play tonight against Central Connecticut State in the Northeast Conference Tournament, also expects other St. Ben’s products — like current Texas guard Myck Kabongo, Iona guard Scott Machado and Creighton big man Greg Echenique — to eventually make the NBA. Kabongo and Thompson are both Canadians who drove overnight one day in 2007 from the Toronto area to Newark in order to meet with Hurley and enroll at the school.
“I knew it had J.R. Smith,” Kabongo told me several years ago. “I was like, ‘They must have a good coach. I want to play at that level.”
Smith, in turn, returned to St. Ben’s to play with younger guys like Samuels, Thompson and Kabongo.
“J.R. always come back to the school and played with us,” Samuels said. “During the summertime, he always come through. J.R. was always around.”
During his nine-year tenure at St. Ben’s, Hurley compiled a 223-21 record and repeatedly challenged for the No. 1 national ranking.
Smith was the first of his players to go to the NBA, jumping directly from the preps to the pros in 2004 even after signing with North Carolina.
Now he’s a valuable member of a Knicks’ bench that scored 50 points against the Cavs. Smith tallied nine points off the bench, including flushing home an alley-oop reverse dunk off a pass from Baron Davis.
Thompson, who finished up his high school career at Findlay Prep after Hurley booted him from the St. Ben’s team after a verbal dispute, played well for the Cavs, scoring 11 points and grabbing eight rebounds.
Samuels, a native of Trelawny, Jamaica, had two points and two rebounds off the bench.
Before the game, Samuels said the time at St. Benedict’s with Hurley, tough as it was at times, helped all these players prepare for life in the NBA.
“It all worked out,” he said. “You know, being disciplined and all the hard work.”
