The seventh and eighth grade division saw a couple of good games this past Saturday night. In the first game of the night, The Jewish Link of NJ took on Treuhaft & Zakaran LLP. The game got off to a slow start as the first quarter ended with JLNJ up 7-5, but the offense on both sides really picked up after that. In the second half, behind evenly spread scoring of David Grunstein (11 points), Gavi Kilimnick (nine points) and Dani Grunfeld (nine points), the Jewish Link pulled away and went on to collect the win.
In the next game of the night, Prime Ortho Rehab faced off against Granolachik. With Prime Ortho missing some of their key players, they put up their best fight led by Joshie Rabitz (14 points) and Akiva Ciment (13 points) and were down by just six at halftime. The second half, though, was a different story as Granolachik exploded for 50 points after the break. Aaron and Jacob Heumann combined for 33 points and Binyamin Sheinfeld added 10 more as they helped Granloachik rebound from last week’s tough loss and secure the victory.
On Sunday we saw a number of close games but the game of the week was a double OT game between the Rangers and Kindersmiles. For four quarters, the game went back and forth. Every time it looked like one team was about to pull away, an opponent stepped up with a clutch shot.
As the clock was running down at the end of regulation it looked like Kindersmiles had done enough to win by two, but just before the buzzer sounded, Moshe Bayewitz hit the shot of the day to force OT. Again in the first OT period, the teams traded baskets and at the end of the first OT we were still tied. In the second, OT Kindersmiles was able to scratch out one more basket than the Rangers allowing them to hold on for a dramatic two point win in double OT.
Rangers were led by Yonah Last’s 22 points but also got important baskets from Eitan Silberberg, Yair Halevi, Nate Wortman, Bayewitz and Daniel Friedman.
Kindersmiles were led by Nate Brotsky’s 28 points and got key contributions from Brian Rosenbaum, Gideon Haberman, Levi Segal and Benji Lumerman.�
We want to point out while this game was very intense throughout, both teams players and coaches showed tremendous sportsmanship.
