By Laura Amato
If you’d told Molloy boys’ basketball coach Mike McCleary that he’d have to play a CHSAA quarterfinal with Cole Anthony cooling his heels on the bench, he probably would have politely declined.
After all, Anthony is the spark that makes the Stanners go, an offensive force and a shutdown defender who, coming into Sunday’s quarterfinal tilt against All Hallows was just 10 points away from reaching the 1,000-point mark. Despite whatever plans McCleary had before tipoff, the Stanners found themselves without Anthony for much of the playoff matchup after the guard was hampered by foul trouble early.
That left it up to rest of the Stanners and the roster delivered, defeating the Gaels 78-59 at Fordham University on the combined efforts of players who simply wouldn’t quit.
“I never want to play a game when he’s not playing. We say if he’s not coming, we aint going,” McCleary said. “We were down, but we got the lead back and we never really relinquished it. Even with Cole being on the bench, these guys really came to play and play very well.”
Anthony was whistled for his third foul with just 48.1 seconds left in the first quarter and Molloy struggled to find an answer for All Hallows’ early-game attack. The Gaels were a shooting force in the first half, connecting on mid-range jumpers and driving the lane without fear against seven-footer Moses Brown.
Molloy went into the break with a 34-30 lead, but it was far from smooth sailing and the Stanners knew things had to change at halftime.
“We expected them to come out hard, we know that we were the team they wanted to beat and had to in order to keep their season going,” said senior guard Khalid Moore, who racked up 21 points. “We just wanted to come out hard and play aggressive.”
Brown and Khalid Moore picked up the scoring slack in the third quarter, combining for 16 points in the period. The duo scored the final five points of the quarter, giving Molloy a lead it would never again surrender and, most importantly, a bit of breathing room down the stretch.
“We knew that we messed up in the first half, so we came out in the second half and just played hard,” Moore said. “We knew we could get back into the game. We just came out on a slow start, we hadn’t played in awhile and we were rusty.”
The Stanners pair continued to pad the lead in the fourth and Brown capped off an early-quarter run with a one-handed dunk. The play made it a 12-point game and Molloy didn’t waver again. In fact, Anthony even got back in the game and, for good measure, broke the thousand-point mark.
“We just wanted to play hard,” said Brown, who finished with a game-high 28 points and 14 rebounds. “Run the floor, get it out in transition and just put the ball in the basket.”
It wasn’t a perfect victory, but it proved something important to the Stanners – this entire roster has a job. And, right now, that job is to win basketball games.
“They all realize that they play a vital role to us,” McCleary said. “Even a kid who doesn’t play at all, he has to help us prepare. You need the whole team, every day.”
