Boys and Girls’ Jeffland Neverson scored a team-high 17 points in the win. (Denis Gostev)
Just 12 days ago, Jeffland Neverson was wheeled off a basketball court in a stretcher, thinking he had badly fractured his leg on national television.
Boys & Girls was back on live TV last night, but Rice was the one in pain, not Neverson, who has played his best since returning to the court from his right leg injury.
The junior forward scored a team-high 17 points – 11 in the second half – and grabbed seven rebounds to lead the Kangaroos to an impressive 69-53 victory over their Catholic school adversaries in the opener of the SNY Invitational at LIU in Brooklyn.
“When you get hurt, it makes you stronger,” Boys & Girls senior Mike Taylor said. “He played with incredible intensity and he played incredibly hard for us today.”
The win sets the Kangaroos up for a showdown against New Jersey powerhouse St. Anthony of Jersey City, which ousted Mount Vernon, 60-47, in the nightcap. It pits a pair of nationally-ranked foes in the Friars, who USA Today has No. 2 in the country, against the 22nd-ranked Kangaroos.
“We got our shot,” said Boys & Girls coach Ruth Lovelace, who will face St. Antony’s Hall-of-Fame coach Bob Hurley Sr. for the first time. “We’re in our backyard and we’re gonna come out and play as hard as we can and try to win.”
On a night when Taylor, the Rutgers-bound guard, was off his game – he had eight points, four shy of the 1,000-point plateau for his career – his teammates bailed him out. Neverson was at the top of the list, followed by rugged forward Leroy (Truck) Fludd (14 points, 10 rebounds) and Hofstra-bound wing Malik Nichols (14 points, four steals and three assists). Jermaine Sanders paced Rice with 16 points.
“I can take a night off offensively because I have everybody around me,” Taylor said, later adding: “I can finish with five, 10 points and we get a 20-point win because we have so many offensive threats — not only the starting five, but we can go 1-10 deep.”
Neverson, Nichols and Fludd were integral to Boys & Girls awakening after managing just two points – yes two – in the second quarter, its worst offensive period of the season by a fair margin.
Lovelace said there wasn’t much yelling at halftime after her players coughed up a 10-point lead. She went down the line, pointing out things each player could do better while gently reminding them they probably didn’t want to continue their inept offensive performance on television for the world to see.
“We weren’t playing as a team, we were just taking bad shots,” Neverson said.
It didn’t take long for Boys & Girls to wake up from its momentary coma. The Kangaroos ripped off a 13-5 run over the first 1:56 of the third quarter by pushing the game’s tempo, creating turnovers with their pressure defense and finishing off their chances – unlike the first half – in the lane.
Neverson started the barrage with a backdoor layup and capped the head-spinning run with a traditional 3-point play following an offensive rebound to give Boys & Girls (18-3) a 34-30 lead. He has shown no ill effects from the two games he missed, sinking the game-winning layup to knock off Winter Park (Fla.) and Duke-bound superstar Austin Rivers last weekend and scoring 14 points in a league victory over Transit Tech.
“It woke me up,” he said of the bone bruise. “I had to come out strong.”
Rice (10-7) was within 56-51 with 3:31 left, but Fludd scored on a nifty hanging layup on a baseline drive and Neverson picked Raiders forward Joshua Gomez’s pocket and skied for a right-handed slam.
“I always tell Jeff we don’t win unless he plays well,” Lovelace said. “Since his injury, he’s really picked it up.”