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Posted Feb. 27, 2008

John Jay senior captain Hakeem Kased doesn’t want his team’s unlikely run to its first NCAA Tournament bid to be labeled a Cinderella story, though he admitted he wouldn’t mind if Disney came calling to make a movie about it someday.

“We probably have to get to the Final Four for that to happen,” Kased said with a laugh.

For now, Kased will settle for John Jay being termed a “good story” which he’s okay with, and we’re happy to share that plenty of movies have been made about such tales.

The Bloodhounds started 3-8 and entered the CUNYAC Tournament as the No. 6 seed, 10-15 overall, 6-7 in league, not long removed from a stretch in which they lost six of seven league games. But a win over No. 3 seed Staten Island in the opening round, in which Kased clinched the game with two late free throws, was followed by a narrow victory over No. 7 seed NYC Tech, which had knocked out No. 2 seed Brooklyn in the first round.

We're sure the Hakeem Kased-Vlade Divac comparsions are more than just visual.

That set up what looked like a championship mismatch against two-time defending champ and No. 1 seed York last Friday. The Bloodhounds went to a smaller lineup and kept their cool, while York got frazzled. Kased headed a 35-point effort from John Jay’s bench with 13 points and eight rebounds, to capture MVP honors in the 68-54 upset. He did this while fighting a back injury suffered in the quarterfinals, one that forced him to the sidelines while his teammates practiced earlier this week.

“We came together at the right time,” said Kased, who averaged 8.7 points and 6.2 rebounds as a 6-4 forward this season (John Jay coach Charles Jackson described him as a Vlade Divac-style player). “We knew we had the talent to win. We just had a problem during the season of getting everybody to stick to the game plan. In crunch time, we stuck with our game plan. We won 21 games my freshman year, but this was the most talented and most mature team that I’ve been on here.”

The victory was the ultimate reward for Kased in a multitude of ways. For one, it proved that sticking things out for a team that went 20-59 the previous three years, even through an ACL tear that forced him to miss 2006-07, was worth it. For another, it was nice payback for the time and effort Kased has put into his non-basketball life.

In addition to being a full-time student athlete, Kased works for the New York City Transit Authority, on a graveyard shift doing train-track maintenance. He attends classes during the day, practice and games in the afternoon and evening, then reports to various stations on the Manhattan No. 1 line, on the West Side by 10 p.m. Kased sneaks in a few two-hour naps throughout the day, then usually gets good rest on Friday because he has no classes then.

For those who may have seen the profiles of New Jersey City’s Dana John, labeled by ESPN as “The Most Exhausted Man in Sports,” Kased’s story is similar in some aspects. Kased works to support his mom and sister. His father, who had heart problems and diabetes died three years ago, right when Kased started working. Living in this manner is rewarding (Kased will graduate in May and hopes to go into school counseling), but exhausting.

“My teammates call me ‘Old Man’ because I’m going bald,” Kased said. “I’m 23, but most people think I’m 27 or 28.”

People also think certain things because Kased, who was born in Brooklyn, is of Palestinian descent and Kased admits to hearing taunts from opposing players and fans. Coincidentally, he said the person on the current team with whom he’s gotten along best is forward Chris Jaeger, who is back in school after fighting in Iraq and has been an invaluable part of the team’s success.

“We have a special bond,” Kased said.

The Bloodhounds all share this bond now as they’ve come together on this magical run. Kased will even concede that the end does resemble that of a fairy tale. But he insists the final chapter has not been written.
 
“We’ve won four in a row, and now we’re looking to make it eight, nine, or 10,” Kased said. “A lot of people say the CUNYAC is a weak conference, and we were the six seed. But right now, I’m really confident in my team.”

PARADISE FOUND: For someone with the skill and confidence to articulate like Baruch senior Chiresse Paradise does, it’s rare for her to utter this response.

“I can’t even find the words to describe it,” she said, when we asked what it was like to watch Lehman beat Baruch for the 2007 CUNYAC title as she sat out with a finger injury.

Chiresse Paradise leads Baruch in points and is second in steals, blocks and assists.

This year, with Paradise fully healthy, the Bearcats went 22-6 and got back to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last three seasons. On their first trip two seasons ago, they earned the league’s first NCAA win, winning at Mount St. Mary. They hope to repeat, if not better that kind of success this time around (early guesses are that they’ll be anywhere from a 12 to 14 seed regionally). The first step was paying back Lehman, both for last year’s loss and a regular-season defeat that snapped Baruch’s 38-game CUNYAC regular-season win streak. That happened after Paradise had 21 points and nine rebounds in the title game win last Friday.

“We came out very passionate and intense for the CUNYAC final,” Paradise said.“You could feel it from every player as they came off the bench. I was astonished by that. There was no point that I was nervous that we were going to lose the game. To go out my senior year with a championship was a great feeling.”

Paradise came to the school as a freshman from a single-parent family in the suburbs of Chicago, coaxed out by teammate and friend Naesha Tyler-Moore, who had just transferred to Baruch from Division I LIU. The CUNYAC is a league primarily made up of New York City kids, but Paradise enjoyed being, as she put, “the foreigner” for a program that at the time had a new coach, Machli Joseph, who was looking for a way to make basketball matter at the school. Paradise was at the head of the transformation.

It has not been a perfect road. Paradise was academically ineligible for the latter part of her freshman year and has missed time due to various injuries and personal matters, but she’ll graduate in May with an English degree, and plans to go to pursue a graduate degree in film study with aspirations of becoming a screenwriter or rapper (“motivational music” she said).

“When you’re 18-19 years old in a big city, it’s hard not to get caught up in the parties, and what’s new and exciting,” Paradise said. “My freshman year, I didn’t focus on school as much I should have, and it backfired. These last three years, I’ve come to a point where my maturity and focus peaked off the court.”

Prior to this season starting, Baruch head coach Machli Joseph wrote his team a preseason prospectus, in which he compared each of his players to someone in the NBA. For Paradise, he matched her with star guard Dwyane Wade. This season she averaged 14.1 points overall, and shot 48 percent from the field in conference play

“We have people who have watched her that say she plays like a guy,” Joseph said. “She gives the other players a lot of confidence and makes them better. She is the kind of player who asks ‘What can I do today to help this team win.’ This year, she improved a lot on her mid-range game and her 3-point shooting. When she’s on the floor, she makes things happen for us. That’s what we missed last year when she got hurt.”

In describing her skills, Paradise didn’t talk about her ability to stop on a dime and score or her nifty passing ability. She takes pride in the other things she brought from Chicago.

“I think I’ve brought a basketball IQ that can rub off on other players, whether it comes to them visually, audibly, or kinesthetically,” said Paradise.

Baruch purposely plays a ridiculously tough non-league schedule to get itself ready for games like the one they’ll play next week. This season’s version included Kean, Scranton, Messiah, DeSales, Chicago and Hamilton, with the crowning accomplishment being a one-point home win against Messiah, which at the time was ranked No. 4 nationally.

“We’ve faced big teams and tough teams,” said Paradise, who had her share of rough games, including a 1-for-18 against Kean that caused her stats to dip a bit. “That schedule will definitely play a part because we’ve seen everything this year. It definitely whipped me into shape.”

It also allowed her to have a nice homecoming in Chicago, where Baruch went for its season-opening tournament, as a thank-you to four-year players Paradise and Moore (“our best defender,” Paradise said), and fellow Chicagoan Dominique McClendon, who has complemented Paradise’s game with strong inside play. Paradise rewarded the 50 friends and family members who came to see her play by reaching the 1,000 career point mark on a tip-in. It was the start of what has been the end of a magical ride, one for which she knows just the right words to describe.

“It was fate the way everything came together,” Paradise said. “I remember reading something from Martin Luther King where he said ‘The right person in the right place at the right time can make history.’ For me to have had the opportunity to play here, I feel we’ve managed to make history.”

ATTENTION TO CENTRE: What makes a player valuable?

It is a question that begs to be answered every time a ballot is cast for an award at any level of basketball. Point-scorers grab the headlines and defenders impede the progress of an opponent. Playmakers distribute the basketball when necessary and have the ability to hit a clutch shot with the game winding to a close.

When a team has an athlete that is designated as being the Most Valuable Player, it could mean he or she does a combination of offense and defense, along with providing the team with solid leadership.

Nestheide

Last season, Centre had the Player of the Year in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference in point guard Matt Nestheide. Though he is built a little more slender than his professional counterpart, Nestheide’s skills have some comparing him to a two-time NBA MVP.

“Thomas Britt, I would anticipate and I’m hopeful that he’s going to be our conference Player of the Year and Thomas is very deserving of that,” said eighth-year Centre coach Greg Mason. “Matt was conference Player of the Year last year. I mention it all the time to people, Matt is our Steve Nash.

“If we need 35 points to win a game, he’ll do that like he did in the conference championship last year against Trinity,” added Mason. “On a Friday night at Oglethorpe, he had five points, seven assists and eight rebounds. He has just a tremendous basketball IQ, as good as anybody that you’ll see at any level in basketball. He’s a silent leader, but everything runs through him. Guys have a lot of confidence when he’s on the floor because they know that something special could happen.”

Nestheide averages 11.6 points per game and is fourth on the team in that department. However, as the point guard and facilitator of the offense, Nestheide has handed out 100 assists against 43 turnovers. Against the competition from the SCAC, Nestheide’s assist-to-turnover ratio is nearly 2.5.

“I pride myself on my decision-making,” Nestheide said. “I like to think I don’t take too many bad shots and that’s what leads me to shoot a pretty decent percentage from the field. It’s knowing the game, taking smart shots and by doing that, I’m still able to penetrate and feed my other teammates. That’s my main goal as a point guard, to make my teammates around me better, give them open shots and hopefully, make their job easier.

“Finding the open teammate is a little bit easier for me to do just because I’ve been a point guard all my life,” he added. “That’s something that I’ve enjoyed and something I’ve always done. I haven’t always been a great shooter. It’s been kind of a work in progress throughout the high school and college years. It’s something that I’ve had to put a lot of time and effort into, but shooting can sometimes be fleeting.”

Nestheide led the Colonels to a 24-5 season in 2006-2007, but could not get them to the “Sweet 16” in the NCAA Tournament. That was due in large part to their draw in the bracket.

In the first round, Centre defeated OAC champion Capital 69-55, but advanced to play Wooster on the road. The Scots dispatched of Centre 73-56. The loss allowed the Colonels to find holes in their game, repair them in the offseason and go 23-1 overall heading into this year’s SCAC Tournament.

“It is beyond our wildest expectations,” Mason said. “We knew we were going to have a good basketball team coming into this year, but I don’t think any coach after 24 games is expecting 23-1.

“The Wooster game was a great learning experience for our guys because we played some very good teams,” he continued. “That was a great environment. Our guys saw, ‘This is the standard not only for us, but for all of Division III.’ Our guys went into the offseason understanding what the next step was going to be.”

The lessons they learned against the Fighting Scots allowed them to make history this year. After losing to Rust in the season opener, Centre has rattled off 23 consecutive wins. They are the first team in SCAC history to finish with a perfect conference mark.

“It’s been a neat experience, simply because there have been some great teams to go through the SCAC,” Nestheide said. “Trinity, my freshman year, I think they made it to the Elite Eight and lost to (UW)-Stevens Point on their home court, who ended up winning it all. No matter how the season plays out the rest of the year, it’s something we can look back on and be proud of.”

Nestheide should be even more proud of the way his teammates have stepped up. Having the reigning Player of the Year on the team means that the target is firmly on the back of the entire squad.

“He’s getting everybody’s best shot,” Mason said of Nestheide. “A lot of teams are face-guarding him. To his credit, he’s not getting frustrated. Him being face-guarded has allowed Thomas Britt and Danny Noll to get better looks and it shows in his assist-to-turnover ratio. I heard Billy Gillespie say one time, ‘A great player, you have to guard him with 1.5 players.’ Matt’s being guarded by 1.5 players, so the other guys are getting some better looks because he’s taking the other teams’ best shots.”

“That certainly made me focus that much harder this summer on improving my game, just realizing that I would have that label and teams would know that I was the Player of the Year last year,” Nestheide added. “In terms of dealing with that, I’m playing with great talent around me and I haven’t really had to press. I was able to defer to my teammates and they’ve done just a spectacular job.”

Centre opens postseason play on Friday against Austin. If Nestheide has his way, he will be distributing the basketball to his teammates all the way from Danville, Ky., to Salem, Virginia and the Final Four.

THE OTHER TITLE GAME: The UAA doesn't have a playoff, but as luck would have it, it does have two "championship games" this week, with Washington U. visiting Chicago. The winner of each game is the champion of arguably the toughest Division III league in the country.

In the interest of providing an unbiased, but well-informed commentary, we went for the best basketball announcer we know, Rochester's J.C. DeLass (WYSL-AM) for a preview of each matchup:

Men's game
X-Factors for Washington: It's easy to pick Troy Ruths as the key player for the Bears since he is likely going to be the UAA player of the year for the second straight season. Ruths has soft hands and a great touch around the basket, but the thing I like the most about him is his consistency. He just never seems to have an off game. That's a great advantage to know that your top post player can stay out of foul trouble and give you significant points, rebounds and good defense.

As much as I like Ruths, against Chicago I think the key player for the Bears may be their sophomore point guard Ross Kelley. This kid has done a great job in place of the injured Sean Wallis and I think he's a big reason for the Bears success this year. I've seen him hit some important shots, he handles pressure well, and he gets the ball to the Bears' difference makers -- Ruths, Tyler Nading, and Aaron Thompson. The Maroons don't really press that much, but maybe they can find a way to rattle Kelley and force some turnovers, get the crowd behind them especially early in the game. One other note on the Bears, if Thompson shoots it like he did against the UR in the Bears win Feb. 10 (17 points, 14 in the second half), that would be a huge boost for Washington. If Chicago chooses to collapse inside on Ruths, that's going to open up space on the perimeter for Thompson and also Danny O'Boyle, another good shooter coming off the bench.

X-factors for Chicago: I really like the way Chicago runs its offense and shares the basketball. Against the UR, the Maroons did a good job of making the post players chase out on the perimeter, with everybody getting touches at the offensive end. They can all shoot the three-pointer, even their big guys. But what's equally impressive about Chicago, their guards can all post up inside and cause problems, especially Matt Corning who is very strong on the block. And I think Jake Pancratz has to win the battle at point guard over the Bears' Ross Kelley.

The last time these two teams played in St. Louis, Pancratz and Corning were a combined 5-for-18 from the field and I would expect they'll be better in the rematch.

Since Chicago is at home, I also think it's crucial that the Maroons get off to a good start and get their crowd into it right away. I've been at the Ratner Center where it gets a little quiet while the crowd kind of waits around for something to happen. If Wash. U. jumps out early, there goes the home court advantage. Ultimately, I think it comes down to Chicago's ability to neutralize Ruths and make somebody else beat them, and the Bears ability to shut down Corning and Pancratz as they did in January.

Women's game
X-Factors for Washington:
This team has maybe the best "refuse to lose" attitude I have ever seen. For them to be in position to win the UAA without their best player, the injured Jaimie McFarlin, is all about their toughness in my opinion. They may have stretches in a game where nothing is going their way, and then all of a sudden, they find another gear and put together a nice run.

Janice Evans has developed into a go-to type player and she's particularly good on the offensive glass. Chicago will need to put a body on her at all times and limit the Bears to one shot at the offensive end. I also like Alex Hoover, a freshman guard who comes off the bench and gives them a spark. She beat the UR with a buzzer-beater in overtime and doesn't seem to get rattled in pressure situations. If this team is close at the end, I wouldn't bet against them. They just find ways to win.

X-Factors for Chicago: This team is deep and very talented. I like what coach Aaron Roussell does with his lineup, mixing solid experience with a couple of key freshman who have made some nice contributions, Dana Kaplan and Karly Kasper. Because they can keep coming at you with fresh players, Chicago really gets after it and up in your face at the defensive end. They are a plus 12 in rebounding margin and that's important for them since they like to get out on the break and beat teams down the floor. This is a very quick and athletic group, and I would think they'll try to wear down Wash.U. with their depth.

The question in my mind -- how will Chicago handle the pressure of playing for the UAA title? The Bears have played in big games like this before, but this is a first for the Maroons. Being at home will help and just as I pointed out for the men, they'll need the crowd to get into it early.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to Chicago's ability to equal Wash. U.'s refuse to lose attitude while the Bears will need to match Chicago's effort on the boards and get some second and third shot opportunities at the offensive end.

If you have a tip or note, send it to atn@d3hoops.com.

2008-09 columns
Feb. 20: York (Pa.), no cliche
Feb. 13: St. Thomas writing history
Feb. 6: George Fox on hunt
Jan. 30: Brother, brother
Jan. 23: Growing a program
Jan. 16: Dudek's rare feat
Jan. 9: Ravin' about Anderson
Dec. 18: Chicago marooned at 0-9
Dec. 12: De Luca back on track
Dec. 4: Ithaca surprises
Nov. 21: Augie gets some delp
Nov. 13: Is repeat possible?

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