Big dreams fuel CSI's big run
| Having found Division I was
not for him, perhaps T.J. Tibbs has found his true joy at Staten
Island. Staten Island athletics photo |
From a fruitless attempt to make the varsity at Division I Monmouth University, to two basketball-free years competing in track at Wagner, T.J. Tibbs found himself facing a crossroad three seasons removed from his glory days at Curtis High School near his Staten Island, N.Y., home.
Ultimately, the clarity he discovered during a year away from college provided two of the surprise storylines heading into the 2012 Sweet 16, the first time the Dolphins have ever reached the third round of Division III's March Madness:
The College of Staten Island is still playing on the Division III NCAA Tournament’s second weekend, representing a City University of New York Athletic Conference that had not seen one of its teams go this deep into a bracket since 1998.
And Tibbs, now a 24-year-old senior playing in his 10th and final semester of eligibility, is leading the way.
Although Staten Island's senior still dreams big – how many Division III juniors do you know of that declared for the NBA draft last spring? – he still remembers the three years that nearly derailed his hoop dreams before rediscovering himself while working the after-school program at his high school alma mater.
“I needed to use that year to just figure out if I was go to play basketball again, if I was going to go to school,” Tibbs said. “The year off was more about me get my mind right and see what I want to do.”
Perhaps Tibbs, and ultimately the Dolphins, could have discovered the Sweet 16 sooner if Tibbs took this route out of high school. But that would have denied us one of the country's richest storylines entering this weekend, with Staten Island taking a 26-4 record and a 19-game victory run into this Friday night's tip-off against No. 3 MIT at No. 9 Franklin & Marshall.
Coming out of Curtis, Tibbs had tunnel vision when it came to Division I. And so, without a scholarship offer, he walked on at Monmouth but left after one year for what he called “non-basketball reasons.” Following two seasons at Wagner, where he only opted to run track, the senior said somewhat wistfully, “I kind of gave up on the game a little bit.”
Longtime coach Tony Petosa hoped Tibbs would join him at Staten Island's Division III school, leaving open a door the star guard never walked through until the fall of 2010. The next step in a journey that transformed the futures of young man and his hometown program.
Last weekend, during a 77-67, second-round victory over Rhode...
