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SoCalHoops Tournament News

Orange County JCC In Semifinals
Tomorrow, Then Finals--(Aug. 20, 1998)

The Orange County Maccabi Team faced its toughest competition on Thursday in the last game of pool play, defeating Bergen County (NJ) 57-38. Bergen is a very athletic team with two pretty athletic 6'-4" guys (gotta get their names). We don't have the complete stats for the game, but the big scorers were Will Sheslow with 18, and Harrison Schaen who finished with 20 points, 9 rebounds and 4 blocked shots. Craig Weinstein, David Gale, Charlie Kranzdorf and Matt Susson had terrific games as well, and Brian Trump and John Munz played very well defensively.

At the conclusion of pool play there were only three undefeated teams: Israel, Detroit and Orange County. Going into the championship bracket, the teams were placed into a blind draw, with the top three teams being picked out of a hat--the first team picked received a bye in the first round of the playoffs, while the other two played games early this morning.

Orange County drew the No. 3 spot, Detroit the No. 2 seed, and Israel received the bye. So here's what the brackets looked like and the results

First Round:

No. 1--Israel--Bye

No. 9 Delaware Valley lost to No. 8 Atlantic City

No. 12 Richmond lost to No. 5 Sephardic Center (NY)

No. 13 Rochester (NY) lost to No. 4 Bergen County (NJ)

No. 14 Samuel Field (NY) lost to No. 3 Orange County

No. 11 Baltimore lost to No. 6 Tenafly (NJ)

No. 10 Mexico lost to No. 7 San Francisco

No. 15 Harrisburg lost to No. 2 Detroit

The first round game for Orange County was really not much of a challenge, and because the seeding was determined by a blind draw, many of the teams ended up playing other teams who had already seen each other during pool play. So Orange County ended up seeing Sam Field, and team that had already lost to OC 74-28, and the team once again fairly easily defeated the New York team 64-29. David Gale (5'-10" Fr. G) had 14 points, 5 assists, 3 steals, and 4 rebounds. Charlie Kranzdorf had 4 points one assist and one steal, and as in many cases the stats themselves don't tell the real story, as he led a number of breaks, and altered several shots with his great hustle. John Munz had 2 points, 2 assists and 2 steals. Harrison Schaen had 14 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 assists. Will Sheslow had 12 points, and made some spectacular no-look passes that had everyone oohing and ahhing, including the refs. Aaron Stein played great defense, had 2 points and 1 steal, while Brian Trump was the high scorer with 16 points and Craig Weinstein had 12 as well.

Orange County really actually held back, not wanting to defeat Sam Field as badly as they could have, and it was obvious that Schaen could have dunked at will but chose not to humiliate a less talented team, which is really part of the spirit of what the Maccabi Games is all about.

So with these results in the first round from the games played at 8:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, the quarterfinals took place at 12:00 noon and 1:45 this afternoon, and here's what happend:

Atlantic City defeated Israel
Bergen County defeated Sephardic Center
Orange County defeated Tenafly (see below for details)
San Francisco defeated Detroit

Orange County ultimately won by 32 points, but was again faced with another tough first half as Tenafly's point guard Daniel Orni (6'-0" So. PG) from Israel lit it up from inside and outside. At the end of the first quarter, with Gale, Weinstein, Trump, Sheslow and Schaen in, the game was fairly tight, and at the end of the first quarter the score was 15-12, with Orange County up by 3.

Early in the second quarter Gale picked up his second foul, Weinstein his third, and Trump his third, and so they sat for the rest of the half, but Stein, Susson and Kranzdorf came in and didn't miss a beat, and at the end of the half, O.C led 32-26.

In the second half, OC managed to adjust to Tenafly's man-to-man pressure and switching defenses to prevent Tenafly's baseline perimeter shooting and passing offense, and eventually by the end of the third quarter, OC led 57-33, behind great shooting and defense of Harrison Schaen, David Gale, Craig Weinstein, Matt Susson and Charlie Kranzdorf. Brian Trump scored well, and set some terrific picks down low, freeing Schaen up on several slashing backdoor alley-oop plays. Weinstein and Gale got into early foul trouble, and after playing the first half, sat for most of the second.

And in the fourth quarter, Sheslow, Schaen, who finished with 9 blocked shots and 17 rebounds, Weinstein, Gale and Susson all just exploded as OC outscored Tenafly 16-8.

So with these wins, this sets up a very interesting geographic semifinals:

In one half of the bracket, Atlantic City will play Bergen County at 8:30 a.m. at West Hills.

In the other half of the bracket Orange County (CA) will play San Francisco at 8:30 a.m. at the Farmington Activity Center.

Thus, the Maccabi Games will be assured of an all East Coast v. West Coast Gold Medal (First) place game, and an all East Coast v. West Coast Bronze Medal (third place game)

The winners of each semifinal will play at 1:30 p.m. at West Hills. The losers of each semifinal will play at 12:00 p.m. at West Hills for the Bronze.