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There are three heavy favorites to win the New Jersey Tournament of Champions title in March: St. Anthony’s, St. Patrick’s and Roselle Catholic.
Two of those “Big Three” will meet in the span of four days when St. Pat’s (10-3) and Roselle Catholic (10-3) essentially play a home-and-home series on Wednesday night (7:30 p.m.) at Rahway High School (where St. Pat’s plays its home games) and on Saturday night at Roselle Catholic (7 p.m.).
By Saturday night, fans of Garden State high school hoops may have a clearer picture of where the TOC favorites stand, although St. Anthony’s already owns a 60-56 win over St. Pat’s at the Dan Finn Classic and remains unbeaten on the season. The Friars are ranked No. 4 nationally by USA Today.
“It’s a good opportunity for both teams to see where you’re at at pretty much the mid-season mark,” said RC coach Dave Boff, whose team has won two of the last three TOC titles. “It’s a great rivalry of ours. We’re not particularly looking forward to [playing twice in four days], I think both teams would rather have the games separated by 10-plus days but that’s just not the way that things worked out this year, so we’ll go out and play them twice in four days and potentially see them at some point later.”
The two teams were slated to meet Saturday at Kean University, which would’ve been a home game for St. Pat’s, but the snowstorm pushed that game to Wednesday. This Saturday game is part of the Investor’s Cup at Roselle Catholic.
“I think it’s fine,” St. Pat’s coach Chris Chavannes said. “I think both teams will be prepared for the two games in four days. We know each other very well, even though we haven’t played each other yet. I’m sure they do their scouting and we do our scouting. The kids are very familiar with each other.”
Between them, the two programs feature a slew of Division I talent. St. Pat’s is led by Harvard-bound point guard Bryce Aiken, uncommitted guard Jamir Harris, Rhode Island-bound power forward Cyril Langevine and uncommitted 2017 big man Nick Richards.
Roselle Catholic counters with talented sophomore big man Naz Reid, senior guard Matt Bullock, junior forward Andre Rafus, and junior guard Nate Pierre-Louis, all of whom are uncommitted.
After starting out in the Top 25 of several national polls, Roselle Catholic is now unranked by both USA Today and MaxPreps, while St. Pat’s is currently No. 24 nationally according to MaxPreps and No. 6 in the East according to USA Today.
“We’re about where we thought,” said Boff, whose team graduated several key players in Isaiah Briscoe (Kentucky), Chris Silva (South Carolina) and Pierre Saar (Monmouth). “I told everybody at the beginning of the season that I thought the rankings for us were high. The expectations were a little high, based more off the success of what we had done last year than looking at what we had to start this year because we’re so young and we have a lot of new pieces. So I’m not really surprised at how the season started.”
As for St. Pat’s, their losses have all been to elite competition: Chino Hills (CA), the No. 1 team in the nation, in the finals of the City of Palms; St. Anthony’s in the Dan Finn; and La Lumiere (IN) in the Hoophall Classic. Those three losses were by a combined 14 points.
“We’re feeling pretty good,” Chavannes said. “We have to find ourselves again. Once we got back from Delaware [Slam Dunk to the Beach] and Florida, some of the kids got a little distracted with outside sources telling them what they should or should not do. As a result we haven’t played as well as we were. I think we’re just now starting to get back to the level we were playing out of state, so we’re feeling pretty good right now.”
“We’ve seen them a few times,” Boff said. “They’re tremendously talented. They’ve had the same group together for a few years. I think that they’re playing fantastic. I think the situation with Mike and Chris seems to be working out and they’re playing as well as anybody in the state.”
Mike and Chris would be former Rutgers coach Mike Rice and Chavannes, who are essentially co-coaching the Celtics.
“It works out great,” Chavannes said. “We think alike in a lot of ways. Our philosophies are very similar, so I think that avoids any conflicts we might have in practice or in games. We collaborate quite a bit. Some practices he leads, some practices I lead. Certain games, he takes the lead, certain games, I might take the lead. So it’s worked very, very well because we’re so similar in our approach to games.”
In the wake of his firing from Rutgers, it remains unclear if a college coach would take a chance on hiring Rice as an assistant going forward. But he could certainly help his stock if he leads St. Pat’s to a successful season, possibly ending in a TOC title.
“I don’t know what Mike’s plans are, or what he’s discussed with his family, but I think if the opportunity presented itself [in college] he probably would [take it] and I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be given an opprotunity,” Chavannes said. “He’s worked to correct some things from the past and he’s a phenomenal coach.”
That said, Chavannes could also envision Rice coaching at St. Pat’s again next year.
“We’re looking forward to having him back,” he said.
Said Rice: “I’m just thankful that I’m coaching basketball. I”m having the time of my life representing The Patrick School and coaching these student-athletes so right now that’s where my focus is.”
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