A game-winner, broken records, an 82-point annihilation, a fight between a player and a referee. The best season in the history of The New School’s basketball team.
This was my third season as a member of the team. I play both guard positions, either making a bunch of passes or shooting a few jump shots. We finished at 11-8, the most wins and fewest losses the squad’s ever had. In the six years the team’s been around, this is the first time that we ever finished with 10 or more victories.
Privat-Gilman, Neuman and Knapp founded the team back in 2009. This is their second season coaching and in those two years they’ve nearly quadrupled our total wins from last season. Their improvement as a staff was a big reason why we improved on the court. They got better with in-game strategies and maintained their ability to develop players, which is what they’re best at.
“Last year we ran plays, this year we ran motions to let the players use more of their instinct and their skill, which was a great adjustment,” senior Dustin Sodano said. Sodano, who’s been captain of the team for three years, passed Knapp for the most 3-pointers made by a single player in their career. He also made seven 3s in a single game this season. Another record.
“We beat teams this season that our team has never beaten in its lifetime,” Sodano said. “With circumstances like these, with three total practices in two months during the season, you got to give a lot more credit to this year’s coaches.”
“Figuring out how to motivate each player, and then how to motivate the unit as a whole, proved challenging,” Neuman said. “I think we accomplished this, though there is always room to grow.”
A quick nod to Diane Yee is a must. Diane is The New School’s Athletic Director. She works tirelessly to support the basketball team. And this historic season wouldn’t have been the same without team manager Blair Reeves and statistician Annie Panousopoulos, who both sacrificed time and energy to selflessly help us out.
We started the season with 15 players, but for various reasons, ended with eight (shouts to Ash Joshi, Mark Spathas, Casey Barber, Jovan Johnson, Noam Dagan, Sudan Green and Tucker Diestel. We miss y’all!)
In our first game, against Cooper Union, froshie Ben Irving went for 20 points and 20 rebounds, the first Narwhal to ever record that stat line. Another record.
Our other freshman, Jesse Futterman, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I was thinking, ‘Is this kid okay?’ He was just doing it so effortlessly, he was just floating towards the ball,”
Futterman said. “It was like a magnetic attraction between the ball and his hands.”
We won that game in overtime, 79-75. We ripped off two more wins over, beating Vaughn College in Queens and Mt. Saint Vincent in the Bronx for the first 3-0 start ever in school history. Another record. We were riding high after those first three wins.
“Out of my three seasons as a Narwhal, this one was hands down the most successful,” junior Louis Anania said. “And that’s not only because we had the best record in New School history, but also because it was clear that everyone involved, from players to coaches, was fully committed to their roles, allowing us to not only grow as individuals, but to really come together as a team.”
We came together so well that we went into hostile territory to get a clutch win against Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. The game was close throughout, with co-captains Sodano and HJ Gaskins making big shots. We were talking trash, they were talking trash. Their crowd was intense. They were big and strong and fast. We pulled out a 56-53 win, our most impressive of the fall semester. We went into winter break with a 5-3 record.
After the break, we started clicking. We went into Pratt, the land of the giants, to get a big team victory. The Cannoneers have two players taller than 6’6”, while our tallest guys are 6’2”. It didn’t matter. Senior Dahi Divine grabbed 11 huge rebounds off the bench for us and we beat them by 11 points.
The second time we played Cooper ended in extraordinary fashion. We were losing by five with 8 seconds left. The norm in basketball is to foul when losing a close game and that’s what Gaskins did. He made a play for the ball, but this ref named Terry had a powertrip. He called Gaskins for an intentional foul, which also qualifies as a technical foul. Gaskins went up to him to ask why he called that. The play looked routine, not like it deserved that type of call. Terry decided to get reckless. After an entire game of making calls to help Cooper and screw us over, he got face-to-face with our captain and said, “I will knock you the fuck out.” Gaskins got pissed, didn’t back down, got thrown out and we lost the game. We were all mad. Terry didn’t even stay after the game. He left as quickly as he could. None of us, on either side, had ever seen a ref do something like that.
A big double-overtime win against Adelphi University’s club team, at a tournament in Stony Brook, Long Island, sparked us for the rest of the season. After winning that game and placing third in a tournament that featured three NCAA teams, we went back into Brooklyn to take on Medgar Evers.
Again, it was close throughout. There was tension in the building, even though their crowd wasn’t as rowdy. They wanted to beat us. On the last play of the game, we were down by 1, with 8.7 seconds left. Senior Ty Anania passed the ball to Gaskins on the right side of the court. He got trapped by two defenders and threw back to the middle. Ty managed to poke the loose ball to Sodano before two players from Medgar Evers could get to it. Sodano lined up a three-pointer from the left side of the court and drilled it. They had a chance to win, but there was no way it was going in. Our captain came through for the first game winner he ever hit in a Narwhals jersey. Another record. I didn’t know what to do with my hands when that shot went down.
Next came a win against Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Their entire team scored 19 points. Yours truly had 17 by myself. We beat them 101-19, holding them to only seven made shots in 40 minutes of action. It was the stuff of legends. That entire game was full of New School records. Best defensive numbers, largest margin of victory, most steals. That was a night to remember. We lost to Cooper the next day, leading up to the final game of the season.
In the middle of the afternoon, in a small middle school gym that Cooper uses for their games, a crowd made up of mostly family members from both teams gathered. It was hot in the gym. We wanted that game badly. They had beaten us twice in February, showing that they were the better team. All we wanted was a shot to have the final word of the season. The game marked the end of the 2014-15 campaign for both of us.
We started slowly. Futterman and Irving were grabbing rebounds and blocking shots, but woke up as the first half started to wind down. Gaskins was getting buckets. He finished with 25 points. I hit four three-pointers, Sodano hit three. We didn’t fold down the stretch and carved out a hard-fought, well-earned 64-58 win. It was a win to be proud of.
“The team’s chemistry was by the far the greatest improvement since last year, resulting in a great victory over Cooper Union,” Panousopoulos said. “The fluidity of movement couldn’t have been better orchestrated.”
Anticipation for next season is big. We’re losing three of the best players the Narwhals have ever seen. Shouts to Dusty, Dahi and Ty! Without those three players coming back and with teams like Cooper Union, Pratt and Medgar Evers waiting in the wings, we have lots of work to put in.
Max is a Journalism major from Queens. He plays collegiate basketball for The New School Narwhals and spends the rest of his time watching and writing about the game.
