LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The most amazing thing about St. Anthony’s 30-0 season is the one that has gone largely unnoticed.
Seven players who were on Bob Hurley’s roster at the beginning of the season are no longer with the team.
“Six have left, one’s been injured,” Hurley told SNY.tv Thursday, one day before the Friars will face Atlantic City (26-5) in the New Jersey Tournament of Champions semifinals at Rutgers.
“We have had some re-shaping of the roster.”
Always the taskmaster, Hurley dismissed six players from the roster during a year when his team has amassed a 63-game winning streak dating to last season’s 33-0 campaign that culminated in a mythical national championship.
How many coaches in America would do that?
“I think that might be the total [number of] kids in the last decade that have left the team,” he said.
Still, the core of UCLA-bound Kyle Anderson, uncommitted senior Jerome Frink, Temple commit Josh Brown and uncommitted junior guard Hallice Cooke have been constant.
“They’ve been the four and we’ve rotated everybody else,” Hurley said. “It’s a sign of the times.”
The 6-foot-9 Anderson on Tuesday was named runner-up to Shabazz Muhammad for the McDonald’s National High School Player of the Year award.
Despite all the turnover, Hurley calls this incarnation of the Friars the best defensive team he’s ever had.
Gill St. Bernard’s entered the Non-Public B final on Sunday averaging 73 points per game, and ended up losing to St. Anthony, 67-39.
“The core’s pretty good and the staff is very good,” Hurley said.
With two more wins, St. Anthony would win its second straight Tournament of Champions title, its 12th overall and finish the season 32-0.
That would mean a two-year run of 65-0.
Not bad for a team that lost seven players this year alone.
Photo: Tony Kurdzuk / The Star-Ledger
