Wadleigh coach Mike Crump is apparently a hard man to please.
Despite the top-seeded Tigers winning their third straight Manhattan borough crown, 66-52, over No. 2 West 50th Street Campus, Crump had little to say about the team’s win. He was more concerned with how the Harlem squad’s play would translate against stiffer competition.
“If we don’t play ‘D,’ we will be out of this thing [the PSAL Class AA playoffs] in the first game,” Crump said. “No matter who we play.”
Wadleigh was more than good enough defensively yesterday.
The Tigers (19-6) held West 50th’s top scorer, senior guard Craig Anderson, to 18 points. If that doesn’t sound like a shutdown performance, consider Anderson exploded for 51 points against Bayard Rustin last Tuesday in the borough quarterfinals.
The teams split their two previous meetings this season, and the borough championship played 50/50 throughout the first half. Tyrie Orosco, a Division I prospect being looked at by Wagner, dominated the opening quarter. He scored 11 points altogether, including a thunderous dunk midway through the stanza. He warmed up the spotlight for Wadleigh’s leading scorer, Boston University-bound forward Malik Thomas.
Thomas (team-high 18 points) took a little longer to get going, tallying only six points at halftime. That’s when Crump went to his usual methods of motivation at halftime.
“I told him that he’s lucky that he committed early,” Crump said. “If Boston saw him playing like this, they wouldn’t have offered him anything. I told him that he was going to mess around and get redshirted.”
When asked after the game about his coach’s comments, Thomas responded simply: “It made me play harder.”
Maybe Crump is on to something.
The long and lanky wing scored in a variety of ways around the basket and was noticeably more active on both ends of the court in the second half. After the Seahawks took a brief 36-34 lead early in the third, Thomas led the Tigers on a 16-2 run to end the third, putting Wadleigh ahead for good.
“I didn’t want to lose,” Thomas said. “I saw we were only up one at the half. I knew I had to come out and finish strong.”
Despite his criticisms, Crump knows what type of player he has in Thomas.
“He’s a talented player, but he has to be challenged,” the coach said. “If he and ‘Rosco’ don’t get the ball, they shut down on offense and defense. They have to understand that part of being a scorer is playing the defense that gets easy buckets on the other end.”
Still, the Wadleigh coach openly worries about his team going forward.
“We suck defensively,” he said. “I used to yell and scream and all that but it doesn’t work. I could tie a stick of dynamite to their backs. It still wouldn’t help.”
Still Wadleigh may be just good enough on defense to make a run in the city playoffs. On apparently a bad night, the Tigers used a five-minute run to dismantle a formidable opponent. Only junior standout Yunus Hopkinson (17 points) joined Anderson in double figures. The rest of the Seahawks were non-factors.
Thomas and Orosco received plenty of help. Point guard David Burgos scored 12 points, while both Basil Harley (eight points) and Karim Rowson (nine) were also effective.
Though the defense may be an issue, the key to the rest of Wadleigh’s season may be Crump’s ability to motivate his players to the level of which they played in yesterday’s third quarter.