One of the best parts of the high school basketball season is the round-robin schedule in Rockland County. There haven’t been many benefits since Section 1 decreased its regular season schedules from 20 to 18 games, but this is one.
With the emphasis on more geographically-based schedules, Rockland teams have played every non-league team in its conference (translation: every Rockland team not in its league) once. That has created some great early season matchups and today/tonight is no different.
The round-robin generally dominates the December schedule on that side of the river. It begins with a full slate today. That slate includes North Rockland at Nyack at 4 p.m. – a game that features the Nyack debut of senior Terrence McNair. The high-flying 6-foot-3 forward will be an instant impact player in the county and across Section 1 this year. He averaged double digits last year at St. Joe’s of Montavale.
You’ll probably recognize the name, of course. McNair is the nephew of former Nyack stars Gerry (Central Conn.) and Mike McNair (Purchase) and of former Nyack girls star Rachel McNair (George Mason). As you can see in parenthesis, all three played college ball.
North Rockland could be the top team in the county this year after Tappan Zee has dominated the competition the last two. The Red Raiders should get serious consideration in all County Center predictions. They have three starters back and a host of other pieces. Coach Chris Roff is generally pretty tough on his team, but even he sounded optimistic when I talked to him last week.
There are also three other Rockland-on-Rockland events tonight: Nanuet at Ramapo and Albertus Magnus at Clarkstown South at 5:30 and Pearl River at Suffern at 6. The latter two are especially intriguing. Albertus and South hope to retool off strong seasons and Pearl River and Suffern are two teams with good, young players that seem to be on the rise.
Check back later for recaps. Colleague Dan DeFrancesco will be at Nyack this afternoon. Follow him on Twitter @LoHud_DeFran for updates.
4 Comments
Scores?????
Josh, how would you rank the AA teams in Rockland this year?
hshoops… I’m going to do my rankings later this week for the first time. I’ll post that stuff then. It will include a specific ranking just for Rockland.
Top 5 for Rockland:
1. No Rock
2. South
3. PR
4. TZ
5. Spring Valley (Sleeper this year. Have some nice young talent that got varsity experience last year. Have a chance to move up these rankings as the year goes on)
Clarkstown North and Suffern just outside the top 5.