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Mostly Cloudy Senior trio sparks South Side
Not much has been able to slow the roll of the first-place South Side boys’ basketball team.
Entering a Nassau Conference A2 matchup with visiting Kennedy Jan. 7, the Cyclones had followed a first-game stumble at Port Washington with nine straight victories by 20 points on average, greatly aided by breakout senior Josh Garelle, whose 14 points per game leads the team and ranks sixth in the conference.
The 6-foot-4 forward was pulled against the Cougars after a first-quarter errant elbow to his nose. Next man up, 6-5 junior Ryan Kennedy, stepped in to lead all scorers with a season-high 17 points as the Cyclones ran their win streak to 10 with a 64-33 romp.
While the rise of Garelle – who as a sixth man averaged 6.8 points last season – has been a surprise boon for South Side (10-1 overall, 4-0 A2), it was chiefly the Cyclones’ widely-known depth – as embodied by Kennedy and others – that had made them consensus favorites ever since a run last season to the Nassau Class A semifinals.
“The biggest difference this year is we return experienced guys who’ve been tested,” said Cyclones head coach Jerry D’Angelo. “We’ve got three players that do 80 percent of our scoring, but also there’s a supporting cast that does a lot that might not show up in the box score.”
“Robert’s a great all-purpose dude,” D’Angelo said. “Every team has trouble figuring out how to match up against him. . . . While Rob and Josh (Garelle) are the slashing, driving type of threat, James Murphy’s our deep-ball threat. And while Rob might be our best defender, James is probably our smartest defender.”
Added D’Angelo: “Those three kids together give teams a lot of problems.”
South Side’s 60.7 points per game ranks second in A2 offensively, while the Cyclones’ league-leading defense has given up 44.2 points per contest. Outside of the opener, South Side has faced few headwinds in its quest to claim a conference crown for the first time in three seasons, with an eye to competing for its first county title since 2011-12.
At league foe Sewanhaka Jan. 7, South Side found itself trailing at the half, 15-10, for the first time all season. Sufficiently rattled, the Cyclones – behind a combined 41 points from the three senior standouts – closed out a 51-36 victory over the Indians.
“I give [Sewanhaka’s] defense credit, but we’ve had moments where we just haven’t executed,” D’Angelo said. “Maybe it was that we hadn’t played in a week. But mainly, I think, we decided in that second half to start playing South Side basketball.”
In what could be a pivotal test, South Side hosted rival Elmont (9-3, 4-0 A2) Jan. 10, after press time, in a first-place A2 showdown.
