By MIKE McCURRY & ADAM ZAGORIA
JERSEY CITY, N.J.—The streak is over.
The Patrick School beat St. Anthony’s, 51-47, on Saturday in the Dan Finn Classic to snap what had been a 41-game winning streak for the Friars dating back to March 2015.
St. Anthony’s won the rivalry game a year ago, 60-56, also at the Dan Finn Classic.
But that squad featured the likes of Jagan Mosely (Georgetown), Asante Gist (Eastern Kentucky), Shyquan Gibbs (NJIT), and Kaleb Bishop (Fairleigh Dickinson), all of whom have proceeded to the D-1 level.
The current roster guided by Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley is much less balanced, at least for the time being, and overly reliant on guards R.J. Cole and Alexander Rice.
Both played all 32 minutes on Saturday—this coming after Tuesday’s emotionally draining victory over the Ranney School—and naturally wore down late.
“The fourth quarter of the game, R.J. has played very well, and he has some mistakes in the fourth quarter,” said Hurley of his Howard-bound senior, who still finished with a game-high 19 points. “They’re fatigue mistakes, because he’s guarding, he’s handling, and he’s scoring—it kind of hit him.”
Conversely, St. Patrick’s has five Division-1 bound seniors in addition to junior Jordan Walker, who led the Celtics with 13 points.
“We’re such a good team, we don’t have one person who can just get 30,” said Walker. “We have so many great offensive players, so many great defensive players, it’s anybody’s night. Sometimes it’s one person’s night, sometimes it’s another.”
Bul Ajang, headed to Tulane next fall, dropped 11 points. Monmouth-bound Marcus McClary added 9. Jamir Harris (Minnesota), Buay Koka (Tulane), and Nick Richards (Kentucky) collected 7, 6, and 5 respectively.
No wonder why Hurley referred to his defensive game plan as “Pick your poison.”
The Patrick School, ranked No. 1 in the state of New Jersey, is the odds-on favorite to win the Tournament of Champions this spring. Saturday’s victory over St. Anthony’s, the reigning TOC champs, only further cements that.
“St. Ant’s is one of the best teams in the state,” Walker said. “I feel like because we’ve beaten them, I feel like we can beat anybody in the state.”
Of course, we could get spoiled with a rematch in the NJSIAA Non-Public B title game.
Not to jump the gun—as Hurley noted postgame, there are still about 16 games remaining before the state playoffs even begin.
The first of those for St. Anthony’s is on Monday, when the Friars head up to the Hoophall Classic at the Basketball Hall of Fame to take on Jemison (AL) High School, featuring four-star Alabama commit John Petty.
The Patrick School will take the same floor shortly thereafter against Pace Academy (GA), which is led by five-star center and future Duke Blue Devil Wendell Carter.
For now, the best Hurley and St. Anthony’s can do is accept a moral victory, a claim the program has not had to settle for since losing to Roselle Catholic in the 2015 Non-Public B championship—a span of 671 days.
“I think when the records come out on Tuesday, we will have taken an ‘L’ [Saturday] even though it may have been a moral ‘W,’” Hurley admitted.
Photo: News12 Varsity
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