HMHS Boys Basketball: Week of January 12 hits highs and lows
By Lauree Padgett / Exclusive to Haddonfield[dot]Today
The Haddonfield Boys Basketball team played three games this past week: two at home against Collingswood and Haddon Heights and one against Kingsway Regional at Paul VI during the school’s annual Showcase tournament. Scoring was key in all three; and in one, I witnessed something I have never seen since I started going to games in the late 1960s and early ’70s … And neither has a player who was on one of those 1970s’ teams …
Ahead of Haddonfield hosting Collingswood on January 13, I checked the Colonial Conference standings and was truly shocked to see the Panthers were going up against the Dawgs with a winless record: 0–11. Were they, I wondered, really that bad??
Well, after the first 8 minutes when all five Haddonfield starters had combined to put 29 points on the board to Collingswood’s 7, it did appear that this year’s squad is lacking some of the fundamentals that made Panther teams of the past tough to play, especially on their own turf. Senior Dawg Chris Beane led the attack, putting up 11 points on his own, with senior Michael Douglas notching 8 and Ryan Guveiyian, John Scipione, and Mike Mooney accounting for 10.
By the second quarter, Haddonfield head coach Paul Wiedeman was already letting his starters watch from the sidelines either for part or all of those 8 minutes. And there were more passes between shots. Hence, the Dawgs only added 10 points to their tally, while the Panthers again put up 7, so going into the half, the Dawgs had a 25-point, 39–14, lead.
In the third quarter, I discovered a new rule has been put into effect this season by the NJSIAA for all schools. It’s called the “running clock,” i.e., the “mercy” rule, and it means that in the second half of a game, if one team gets ahead by 35 points, the game clock keeps running except for timeouts called by the coaches. At some “point” in the quarter, I heard our announcer Mark Hershberger saying “running clock,” and when I looked at the scoreboard, I saw that despite the ball not being in play, the clock was still ticking down. At first I thought Hershberger was alerting the refs that the scoreboard was malfunctioning, but then it hit me that this was happening on purpose. I thought it began at the point when a bucket by Mooney off a feed from Guveiyian, who got it from Beane, made it 46–15 with about 6:29 to go in the quarter. However, when checking in with Coach Wiedeman the next day, he explained that the running clock is activated when one team goes up by 35 points, which didn’t occur until the 5:10 mark when Guveiyian went up and in. Wiedeman also told me, “The only time the clock stops is during time outs or if a player is injured. The clock will resume back to normal if the game becomes tied again.”
No one I asked about the new rule, including Wiedeman, is a fan. My assumption is that it was deemed necessary to keep a team that is much better than its opponent from running up the score. (In investigating this a bit more, I learned that some conferences in the state, including the New Jersey Interscholastic Athletic Conference, had already been enacting the rule. Jeff Holman, in fact, who is our scoreboard operator extraordinaire, is really opposed to it. Not only does he constantly have to remind himself not to stop the clock, he has this lament: “I imagine that people in the crowd who do not know the new rule feel the clock operator is incompetent.” That’s actually a valid concern. A few times when I was sick over the Christmas break and watching from home, I thought I saw the clock in motion when play had stopped, and since Holman was not running the scoreboard, I assumed it was the substitute’s sticky fingers. Not that the NJSIAA asked for it, but here is my 2 cents’ worth: I am not convinced running the clock is any better than a team losing by 50 points. (And ,in fact, even with the running clock employed versus Collingswood, Haddonfield still won by 62. points) First, as a few people pointed out, a nonstop clock makes it pretty much impossible for the team that’s behind to catch up. But IMHO, it’s also telling them, “You’re playing so badly, we want this game to end as quickly as possible.” How is that sending a better message?
But, I digress. To get back to the game itself, the Panthers only got one 2-point basket, which came less than a minute (clock still running normally) into the third quarter. The other 26 points came off of Dawg output. Beane, Douglas, and Guveiyian scored 9, 8, and 7, respectively—or all but 2—of those 26 points. In the final 8 minutes, 6 Dawgs, led by a pair of treys by senior sharpshooter Chase Stadler, put 19 more points on the board. And, as mentioned already, when the clock finally stopped for good, the Dawgs had devoured the Panthers 84–22.
Quarter Scores:
1st: Haddonfield, 29, Collingswood, 7
2nd: Haddonfield, 10, Collingswood, 7
Half: Haddonfield, 39, Collingswood, 14
3rd: Haddonfield, 26, Collingswood, 2
4th: Haddonfield, 19, Collingswood, 6
Final: Haddonfield, 84, Collingswood, 22
Player Scores:
Chris Beane: 23
Michael Douglas: 18
Ryan Guveiyian: 11
Ethan Miller: 8
Chase Stadler: 6
Mike Mooney: 4
John Scipione: 4
JP Crawford: 2
Jack Sporer: 2
Reece Rhea: 2
Two days later on January 15, the Dawgs hosted the Garnets of Haddon Heights, and I also checked the Garnets’ record ahead of gametime. The Garnets were 2–2 in the Liberty division of the Colonial Conference and 6–4 overall. And for a while, it seemed as if the Heights-Haddonfield matchup would be a bit more of a contest.
In fact, when the HUDL stream kicked in a few minutes late (full confession: Since I knew I could watch the stream live, I opted to do so instead of going out to what was going to feel like, thanks to the windchill, 10° at 6 p.m.), the Dawgs were down 2–3 with 6:39 on the clock. (I found out later from Hershberger that Chris Beane got the Dawgs’ first basket). John Scipione’s 2 would give the Dawgs a 1-point, 4–3, lead a few plays later, but after Heights didn’t score, the Garnets got the ball back on a travel call. This time, the ball went in the net, and the Garnets went back on top 5–4 with 5:15 on the clock. And so it went. Beane’s 2 made it 6–5, Dawgs. Heights’ 2 flipped the Dawgs’ 1-point advantage to a 1-point, 6–7, deficit. A drive by Michael Douglas made it 8–7, Dawgs, but a shot from behind the arc put Heights up by 2, 10–8, with 1:32 left in the quarter. Ryan Guveiyian tied it at 10, and that was the last score of the quarter, meaning that the next 8 minutes would start with the teams knotted at 10 apiece.
Guveiyian picked up where he left off, and his 2 off the inbound put the Dawgs up 12–10. A few plays later, Douglas stole the ball and went cross-court, giving the Dawgs a 4-point, 14–10, lead. After the Garnets got a 2, the Dawgs’ next 2 points came off foul shots, one by Douglas and one by senior Jack McKeever. However, the Dawgs got two more field goals, one by Guveiyian and one by McKeever, with McKeever getting fouled and sinking the shot from the line. That pushed the Dawgs’ lead to 21–12 with about 4 minutes left in the half.
After the Garnets’ mini-drought ended with a 2, the Dawgs didn’t score but got the ball back on a steal and McKeever got his second bucket in a row, making it 23–14, Haddonfield. The two teams then traded a pair of foul shots, the Dawg shots coming from Douglas, and with 2:30 on the clock, the Dawgs were up by 9, 25–16. The Dawgs got the last 6 points of the half on 2-pointers by Scipione, Mike Mooney, and McKeever. When the teams left the court, the Garnets were now trailing by 15, 31–16.
That lead expanded quite a bit in the third. The Dawgs’ defense held the Garnets to single digits—9 points—with Beane, Mooney, and McKeevers each putting in 6 for the Dawgs to combine for 18 of their 20 points. Going into the 4th, the Dawgs had doubled the Garnets’ score and were ahead by 26, 51–25. The 4th was the only quarter that Heights put more points on the board, 19 to Haddonfield’s 14, but by then, it didn’t matter. The Dawgs still beat the Garnets by 21, 65–44.
Thanks to his 8 4th quarter points, Ryan Guveiyian, who also pulled down eight rebounds, finished with 16 points. Chris Beane and Jack McKeever each had 12.
Quarter Scores:
1st: Haddonfield, 10, Haddon Heights, 10
2nd: Haddonfield,21, Haddon Heights, 6
Half: Haddonfield 31, Haddon Heights, 16
3rd: Haddonfield, 20, Haddon Heights, 9
4th Haddonfield, 14, Haddon Heights, 19
Final: Haddonfield, 65, Haddon Heights, 44
Player Scores:
Ryan Guveiyian: 16
Chris Beane: 12
Jack McKeever: 12
Michael Douglas: 9
Mike Mooney: 8
John Scipione: 4
Ethan Miller: 2
Jack Sporer: 2
The last game of the week took place at Paul VI during the annual Showcase. Haddonfield went up against the Dragons of Kingsway Regional High School. In the each of the first two quarters, the Dawgs scored one field goal. And no, that’s not a typo. Both of them were by Chris Beane. In all the years I have been going to games, I have never seen a Haddonfield team held to 4 points in 16 minutes. Maybe a quarter. But never for an entire half. I talked about the game later in the day with Gary Vermaat, who played on the pre-Dave Wiedeman teams, graduating in 1971. He also cannot recall Haddonfield being held to 4 points for two quarters.
From start to finish, the Dawg defense was sharp, causing many turnovers, often along sidelines or under the basket. But the shots that were taken in the first have kept missing, some very badly. Even layups were falling way short of the rim. It was hard to watch. Haddonfield teams are notorious for not being at full throttle when a game starts in the morning or, as this one did, at noon. But this went beyond the players being a little on the slow side offensively. This was flat-out ugly. When they exited the court at halftime, the Dawgs were down by 22, 4–26, and I was wondering if the “running clock” rule might have to be implemented against us.
However, while the Dawgs were unable to overcome that 22-point deficit, they did hold the Dragons to 23 points and found their shots, putting up 33 points and winning the second half, if not the game. To me, this was its own victory, because it emphasizes that no matter what, Haddonfield basketball teams do not give up or let up. Even when they are ahead by 20 instead of trailing by 20, they play hard. To go from netting 4 points in the first half to 33 in the second (I’m a journalist for a reason, so I asked Google for an assist, and was informed that represents a 725% increase) is no small feat. They could have just gone through the motions and accepted the outcome. But they pushed and pressed and kept at it until the final seconds. So for that, I applaud them, Wiedeman, and his coaching staff. And moving forward, I suspect this game will serve up several lessons to the players and coaches as well.
Quarter Scores:
1st: Haddonfield, 2, Kingsway Regional, 12
2nd: Haddonfield, 2, Kingsway Regional, 14
Half: Haddonfield, 4, Kingsway Regional, 26
3rd: Haddonfield, 16, Kingsway Regional, 11
4th: Haddonfield, 17, Kingsway Regional, 12
Final: Haddonfield, 37, Kingsway Regional, 49
Player Scores:
Michael Douglas: 10
Chris Beane: 8
Ryan Guveiyian: 8
John Scipione: 7
Mike Mooney: 2
Jack McKeever: 2
Haddonfield is now 10–3 and remains undefeated overall in the Colonial Conference. Tuesday, 1/19, the team heads to Paulsboro for a rematch against their Liberty Red Raider rivals. (In round one in December, the Dawgs prevailed 69–443, but if I recall, the Raiders were without a key player.) Then, two days later, they Dawgs head to the Hawks’ nest to take on Patriot member Haddon Township, which is having another very good season. As of this writing, the Hawks are 11–2 overall and sit atop the Patriot division with a 5–0 record. The Dawgs finish out the week heading down the shore to take on Holy Spirit.