The Summit Academy boys basketball team dominated their first home and conference game of their season as they beat the Cobble Hill School of American Studies, 85-45.
Coach Phil Grant’s team came into the Monday, November 19 home opener, that had the gym packed with fans, after recording two convincing wins the previous two days to open the season.
On Saturday, the Eagles beat Taft Educational Campus, an A division school from the Bronx, 81-48 at Our Savior Lutheran in the Bronx as part of the X-Men Invitational. On Sunday, the team defeated Medgar Evers Preparatory School, which is a tough school from the B division, 68-55 at Thomas Jefferson High School, in the Hersh Memorial Classic.
Jordan Council, who is coming off of a standout sophomore season as a key part of the team advancing to the second round of the playoffs, led the team with 19 points and had many impressive passes. The team had a balanced scoring effort as four players scored in double figures and two more scored nine points.
Grant, who is in his third year coaching the team, liked that the team was playing in front of the Summit fans for the first time with the usual enthusiastic atmosphere. The team was able to show off their new players for their home crowd for the first time.
“It was exciting,” Grant said. “We have a lot of new guys. Our fans were excited to see some of our new guys. My son got a chance to get some playing time. We have great fans here and our students are crazy. It was a great atmosphere today.”
At the end of the first quarter the score was 14-12 with Summit losing. This was partly because the team was rusty after having played the previous two days.
In the first quarter, Summit had a few lay ups and an exciting fast break dunk by Nicholas Mickens, who is a junior. They started with a 5-0 deficit and then started improving.
Council made a deep 3-pointer to begin the second quarter. Shortly after Mickens made a corner 3-pointer to give Summit a 20-19 lead, and they would not give up this lead the rest of the game.
Senior Shamal Grant Jr. made a corner jumper to give Summit a 29-21 lead and then the Eagles would go into a halftime with a 33-23 advantage after sophomore Jared Reyes made a layup after a no look pass just before the halftime buzzer sounded.
“I think guys were a little tired at the start of this game,” Grant said. “I think that is why we got off to a slow start. But once the second half came, we got our second wind, guys got their composure and we opened the game up.”
The third quarter is where the Eagles really seized the momentum and made sure they would not lose the home opener. Summit went on a 6-0 run to make the score 39-23 when a timeout was called with 6:09 left in the 3rd quarter.
Council, who averaged 17 points a game as a sophomore, scored 14 of his team high 19 points in the second half.
“Jordan got off to a slow start,” Grant said. “He missed a couple of shots early and had a couple of turnovers early. Again, same thing with him, he played a hell of a game last night, so I think he was just tired because in the second half he settled us down, he started making some shots, he got other guys some easy shots. He sparked our run in the second half.”
Grant also singled out Mickens as playing well in the second half and the coach was also impressed by the athleticism he showed in the first half during his breakaway dunk.
“He had another huge dunk yesterday,” Grant said. “I didn’t realize he was that athletic. I don’t see him do that in practice. I’ve never seen him do that in a game until yesterday.”
After the timeout with 6:09 left in the 3rd, Summit went 18-11 run to make the score 57-34 at the end of the 3rd. The lay up that Cobble Hill made came just after the 3rd quarter ended.
In the 4th quarter, Cobble Hill cut the lead to 69-40 with a layup and then Phillip Grant, the coach’s son, answered with a corner three to make the score 72-40.
Grant was impressed with how the young players, including his son, played in the first home game.
“My son is a freshman here,” Grant said. “He actually got the MVP of the game on Saturday. He came in off the bench and played really well. Jared knocked down shots and played well. Our young guys are coming along.”
He was able to extend his rotation after not being able to do so in the previous game on Sunday because the score was a lot tighter.
“I enjoy games like this, I am not trying to embarrass the other team, but I like games like this to get my younger guys an opportunity too,” Grant said.
To make the score 80-45, Summit made an and one layup causing the crowd to go into an uproar and then Grant, who finished with 10 points, made a jumper from the foul line to make the score 85-45, which is how the game would end.
When Summit has played Cobble Hill in the last few seasons a similar pattern has taken place. They have won by 30 or more the last two years at home and then have lost when playing at Cobble Hill, and Grant is hoping to reverse this trend this season.
Even though the squad won by 40 points, Grant had some ways that he would like his team to improve as the season continues. His main takeaways were decreasing the turnovers not giving up so many offensive rebounds.
“We are still throwing the ball away too much and not rebounding as well as we should,” Grant said.
However, he is pleased that he has been seeing incremental progress from his team and realizes that it is more important to peak later on in the season.
“As long as we are improving every game I am satisfied, and our guys are improving every game,” the 3rd year coach added.
Through three games, he was pleased that the scoring has been balanced, the squad is sharing the ball and with that everyone has been getting the ball where they like so they can succeed.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the Eagles edged Erasmus Hall High (A Division), 82-75, in a non-league game at Paul Robeson High in the Paul Robeson Classic. This improved their record to 4-0 during the 2018-2019 season.
