By Dylan Butler
Instead, the 5-foot-6 junior guard played just 54 seconds before falling to the floor, grasping her right knee. After missing all of last year with a torn ACL in her left knee and spending months to get back in game shape, Kacic could not believe she was on the hardwood again, writing in pain.
“I felt all the work I put in during the summer had finally paid off,” Kacic said. “I felt physically strong. My left knee felt great, there were no problems. Maybe I was favoring it too much, I don't know.”
As she sat at the end of the Manhattan bench with her leg wrapped in a bag of ice and elevated on a chair, Kacic remembered her latest knee injury came on the one-year anniversary of her surgery to repair her right knee, which she hurt the day before Midnight Madness last season.
“At least it happened in a game this year, last year I didn't even have a chance to play,” Kacic said. “It's hard because you put so much time into it. Hopefully, it's nothing serious.”
Immediate reports were that she had a strained knee.
Kacic, who is averaging 6.5 points and 2.1 assists per game off the bench for Manhattan this year, is playing in just her second season, but her strong work ethic convinced Buscaglia to name her a co-captain with Brita Hinkle, the lone senior on the team.
“That speaks a lot about the type of person she is,” Buscaglia said. “She is a very strong and silent leader. She loves the game and has such a respect for people, that's why I felt she deserved it.”
After so much time away from the game, Kacic played extremely well in the first eight games of the year for the Lady Jaspers. She nailed a three-pointer with 10 seconds left against Rider on Dec. 10 to send the game into overtime and hit four free throws in the final 10 seconds to ice the win. She also scored a season-high 15 points on 5-of-5 from three-point range against Columbia on Nov. 21. It was just her second game back from her ACL injury.
Kacic is not the only Queens native who has come off the bench this year to make a difference for the Lady Jaspers. Freshman Becky Tompkins from Richmond Hill is third on the team in scoring, averaging 9.9 points per game in 18.7 minutes per game.
“She is probably the best on the team in terms of getting a shot off from anywhere on the floor,” Buscaglia said of Tompkins. “Most of the time, it looks like she has ice for blood. She can be as good as she wants to be.”
Even the 5-foot-10 Tompkins, who played her high school ball at Martin Luther, a school not widely regarded as a basketball powerhouse, was surprised at how well she is playing so soon.
“I was kind of shocked,” she said. “I was hoping to do OK, but then to perform like that, it's a real confidence booster. It shows that I belong her, that I can compete.”
Despite not playing basketball until the eighth grade, Tompkins broke 13 school basketball records at Martin Luther, including the all-time leading scorer (1,741 points), the all-time leader in rebounds (969), blocked shots (212) and steals (250).
Tompkins also played for the highly regarded Gauchos/Excel AAU program, with George Mason freshman Osoto Edobor-Osula from Jamaica High School.
“It was good to play against her, it was nice to see her,” Tompkins said of Edobor-Osula. “She played well. She's the same player I knew, but she's gotten better as to be expected.”
In her collegiate debut against Wagner on Nov. 18, Tompkins scored 12 points and grabbed four boards. She scored 14 points against both University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Richmond to earn all-tournament honors in the UNCG-Marriott Classic on Nov. 24 and 25. She tied a team-high with 12 points, including a jumper to give Manhattan a come-from-behind 55-52 win over rival Fordham.
“She has all the talent in the world, she just needs to work on improving her passing and her defense,” Buscaglia said. “But she can shoot with any other Division I player out there.”
