When fans saw this weekend’s games on the Garnets’ schedule a few months ago – at New Rochelle on Friday night, then at Scarsdale 20 hours later on Saturday afternoon – they may have thought, “Hmm … back-to-back road games against two of the top teams in Class AAA (Rye is Class AA) … what the heck is Coach Tom Proudian thinking?”
We’ll let Coach answer that question himself: “I want to battle-test these boys as often and as hard as I can in the regular season so that come playoff time, we’ll be ready. That’s what we play for.”
Note to the rest of Section 1: Rye (12-6) looks pretty darn ready. After a 60-47 loss at New Rochelle on Friday, the Garnets played their best team game of the season a night later, winning 59-56 at Scarsdale.
On Friday night in New Rochelle (14-4), Rye’s engine room – Jake Kessner, Charlie Rupp, Andrew Wilmarth, and Patrick McGuire – all took turns trying to slow 6-foot-7 senior Malik Gasper, but to little avail. The New Rochelle standout dominated from close range for 26 points, complementing a number of timely fourth-quarter 3-pointers from the team’s perimeter players.
Against Scarsdale (13-6), the first order of business for any opponent is overcoming Princeton-bound senior shooting guard Jake Sussberg and his 30.1 scoring average. Sussberg dropped 33 on the Garnets, but it wasn’t enough.
In the first quarter, Wilmarth, Kessner, and Henry Shoemaker each connected from beyond the arc to give Rye an 18-5 first-quarter lead. Rye’s physical interior game was on display in the second quarter, powering the Garnets to a 32-22 halftime lead.
“I told our guys at halftime that Scarsdale would most likely make a run,” Proudian said. “Sussberg is such a strong player. We knew he would heat up.”
That he did. Rattling off 3-pointers from well beyond the arc, Sussberg’s Raiders roared back in the with a 26-5 run to take their first lead, 40-38, with 1:45 left in the third.
But Rye never flinched. Wilmarth (19 points), Kessner (15), Shoemaker (12), Carson Miller, Rocklan Boisseau, Ben Hudson, and Justin McCarthy all kept their composure and showed unflappable Garnet resilience throughout a down-to-the-wire fourth quarter. Wilmarth’s two nothing-but-net free throws with under 4 seconds to go iced the game for Rye.
For a high school basketball game on a cold Saturday afternoon in February, this one was as good as it gets.
The Garnets are playing well as a whole, but in the past two to three weeks, one player in particular is almost unrecognizable from the first half of the season.
“He’s our field general,” Proudian said of Shoemaker. “We run everything through Henry and he’s becoming the leader he was meant to be.”
The 6-foot-5 guard’s confidence, decision-making, strength, and athleticism are all peaking at just the right time. So what’s changed?
“I can’t really explain it,” he said, “but we’re just feeling a nice groove as a team right now. Our coaches are encouraging us to be ourselves on the floor. It feels like we’re going in a good direction.”
The team has two more tough tests at home before the postseason begins, against Harrison (10-7) at 7 p.m. Feb. 14, and against Tappan Zee (16-1) at 1 p.m. Feb. 15.
