Cardozo defense beats Campus Magnet

A tough year for the Campus Magnet boys’ basketball team got a little tougher on January 5.
Queens rival Benjamin Cardozo - the team that nipped Magnet in the borough championship in 2007-08, the team that has surmounted the loss of several graduated starters with aplomb in 2008-09 - started off slowly but finished like a house afire. Through two quarters and one minute on Monday, the Judges trailed Magnet by 11 points; through a full three quarters, Magnet’s lead was still 47-41.
Cardozo, however, clicked in the fourth, when the Judges scored 22 points to Magnet’s five. By the time they left Cambria Heights for a 7 p.m. return trip to Bayside, the score was a comfortable 63-52, no evidence remaining that it had ever been so close.
Cardozo’s defense was the difference-maker. While junior guard Sasha Clarida, averaging 17 points per game this season for the Bulldogs, scored 22 points over the first three periods, he was largely shut down in the fourth - even while scoring all but one of his team’s fourth-quarter points. Magnet head coach Charles Granby appeared intent on slowing down the Bulldogs’ offense, as teams are wont to do when sitting on a lead, but his players looked uncomfortable.
They looked particularly vulnerable when the ball moved into Cardozo hands. Twice in the closing minutes, with the score still largely even, Cardozo sophomore point guard Christophe Gayot snuck past opposing guard Israel Vickers and relied on junior forward Ryan Rhoomes to finish and put the game out of Magnet’s reach.
Gayot’s slick passing was a major cog in Cardozo’s balanced attack. Meanwhile, Magnet’s second-leading scorer, senior guard Chad Coachman, scored only nine, the Cardozo score sheet was populated by four players in double figures. Rhoomes, with 15 points and 15 rebounds, and junior forward Dwayne Brunson, with 10 points and 12 rebounds, each secured a double-double. Sophomore guard Shelton Mickell and junior guard Reynaldo Walters, the latter relying extensively on free throws, respectively scored 14 and 13. Gayot recorded seven assists.
This is not to say they were smooth all game long. In the first half, the 6’8” Brunson and the 6’6” Rhoomes were often ignored at the expense of three-point attempts or left hanging at the expense of intercepted passes. Gayot was responsible for four turnovers in the first half, and as a defender, he found himself on the receiving end of a few showy drives to the hoop.
By the fourth quarter, however, he and the Judges were engaged in a turnaround that conspired to deprive Campus Magnet of a stunning upset. The win would have meant a lot to the Bulldogs, who have looked weaker all season than their PSAL Queens ‘AA’ rivals, even though the distinct roster transformations the teams suffered were comparable. Clarida is Magnet’s only returning starter; Cardozo enters 2008-09 without a single senior. Yet Magnet started its season with an unexpected two-point loss to Long Island City and was only 4-3 (as opposed to last year’s 17-1) entering Monday’s play; Cardozo was 5-0 and has still never come within 10 points of losing.
Still, one truth about the early-season schedule cannot be ignored: Magnet’s has been relatively daunting, while Cardozo’s has been comparitively easy. The Bulldogs were paired with Thomas Edison, currently 7-0 and atop the division, in their second game and lost by just two points. One week later, 2008-09 upstart Forest Hills, with a loss to Edison serving as its only blemish of the season, topped Campus Magnet 58-57. Including the defeat to Long Island City, Magnet’s season has been more painful than discouraging.
Cardozo, meanwhile, has had much better luck against Thomas Edison and Forest Hills, at least according to some definitions. The two December matchups marked the only challenges of Cardozo’s early-season schedule, and both contests fell victim to winter weather, postponed by Cardozo High School and the PSAL, respectively. (Cardozo did, however, administer Long Island City a 30-point thrashing.)
Monday’s win over Campus Magnet, then, leaves enough unresolved to make the Judges’ February 2 away game against Thomas Edison their most-awaited matchup yet. At least one Queens team will emerge from the match-up imperfect. As long as the connection between Gayot, Rhoomes, and Brunson remains strong, there is no reason to believe that the boys from Benjamin Cardozo cannot ascend to the top the borough one more time.