Harrison’s basketball season may have come to an end with a loss to Byram Hills in the Class A quarterfinals on Feb. 23, but for a young Huskies group, this season could be instrumental to the future of the program. As the squad looks ahead to next fall, head coach Gary Chiarella believes that big things are in store for a now-experienced Huskies group.
After sneaking into the playoffs as a No. 24 seed, Harrison turned heads in the sectional tournament, winning an outbracket game against John Jay and stunning No. 8 Ardsley in the first round before falling to the top-seeded Bobcats 56-35 with a trip to the County Center on the line. Contending with a huge size differential, the Huskies couldn’t overcome the rebounding disparity and fell into an early 15-0 hole that spelled an end to their final four hopes.
“Their length caused quite a few problems, especially with our defensive rebounding,” Chiarella said. “And even though we settled down to cut their lead to [six points], trying to come back on a team like that is pretty tough.”
Despite the loss, however, Chiarella said that he had nothing but praise for his squad, which finished the year with a 6-17 record but showed great improvement late in the year.
“After the game, we talked a lot about their attitudes and how outstanding they were, and how they never gave up,” Chiarella said. “There’s not one team that could say they outworked us this year, and that paid off in the end.”
With six seniors graduating at the end of the year, the Huskies will return eight players next fall, including a couple of key pieces like junior point guard Luke McCarthy and sophomore Alex Siapanides.
“Luke was our best player this year and Alex also played very well at times,” Chiarella said. “But we’re going to have a lot of athleticism, we’re going to have some more height, and we’re just going to need our bigs to come up big, no pun intended.”
And as far as the team’s surprising run through the playoffs, Chiarella believes that the team’s late-season successes bode well for preparing the team for next year.
“The confidence level will be very high, the kids will step up, they’ll be a year older,” he said. “This year, we had almost no varsity experience coming in, but as we settled down, we got that experience and I think it will make a huge difference.”
