February 10, 2007
Both say that basketball is their life and the way things are going, they’re having the times of the lives.
East Haven’s Jessica Moriarty and Hamden’s Chelsea Blake could very well be twins, blazing identical trails as their high school careers come to an end. Both are senior captains, point guards who lead their girls’ basketball teams in scoring, and both are looking to help their teams make long runs in the upcoming conference tournament.
And neither one really saw it coming.
"I knew we were going to be good," Moriarty said as her team heads into the final week of the season 15-3. "I didn’t think we’d be this good."
The words are similar to those of Blake, whose team is 14-4 and a serious threat in the Southern Connecticut Conference tournament, which begins Saturday.
milestone ahead
Blake is just 23 points shy of cracking the 1,000-point mark. She’s got a plan to crack the mark in Monday’s game against Sacred Heart-Hamden.
"It would be great," Blake said. "It’s senior night, against our rivals. I know there’s going to be people in the stands counting it down. It can’t get any better than that."
Like Moriarty, the 5-foot-5 Blake is a basketball junkie. She’s played on travel teams since she was 8 and remembers receiving her first letter of interest from a college (Kansas State) when she was in eighth grade. She developed her tough side battling against her brother Cory while growing up.
"He’s four years older than me, and he used to bang me around," Blake said. "I always played against the boys, and you have to be tough to play against them."
Blake is a battler. She can penetrate and shoot and is one of the fastest guards in the area. Against West Haven on Tuesday, Hamden held off the Westies by one point with Blake dribbling out the final 2 minutes of the game virtually on her own. The Westies trapped her, banged her, and fouled her. She never turned the ball over.
Said Blake: "Coach just said, ‘Chelsea, do your stuff.’ And I knew what I had to do. I love that.’"
Hamden coach John Ceneri loves turning the show over to Blake, who is a fine ball handler with a deft shooting touch. She will play at New York University next year, and the coaches there have already told her they want her to average about 15 points. That’s fine with Blake, but she’s already set her sights on passing the ball.
"I want to set the school record for assists in a season and a career," Blake said. "That’s my goal. The coaches want me to score, so I guess I’ll have the ball a lot. I’d rather get 15 assists and no points than score 30, especially if we win."
But Blake won’t complain about having the ball a lot. She smiles when she says her favorite team is the Phoenix Suns and dazzling point guard Steve Nash is her favorite player.
They are two peas in a pod.
Fast start
And that’s basically what Blake and Moriarty, who only know each other from the other side of the court, have become.
Moriarty suffered through a dismal start to her career. While East Haven won 10 games her freshman year, when the team truly became Moriarty’s to run as a sophomore, the Easties went just 4-16.
"That was pretty bad," Moriarty said. "We knew we were young, all freshmen and sophomores, but it was bad. We weren’t good at all."
The Easties showed promise last year and improved to 9-11. So when Moriarty started her final season, she had plenty of hope for a good season.
"What happened is we got off to a 5-0 start," East Haven coach Vinnie DeNuzzo said. "Once we did, the girls really believed in themselves. When we shoot, we can beat anybody. Our losses have come when we didn’t shoot well. We knew we had the kids coming back to be good, but we really didn’t know what to expect."
DeNuzzo knew he could count on Moriarty especially to do a little bit of everything on the court. Because the Easties are relatively small, at 5-7 Moriarty plays under the basket on defense and is a solid rebounder. But she’s most comfortable bringing the ball down the court and distributing. She also feels that the start of the season was crucial.
"That was so important," she said. "We won at Branford, which is a tough place to play, and then we beat Law (Milford). I think that proved to ourselves that we could beat anyone."
But there was still one step left. While East Haven was piling up wins, it still had to beat one of the best teams to stake a claim of truly belonging with them. And that’s where Moriarty turned to her past. A veteran of the AAU circuit, Moriarty had played with the bulk of Career’s starting lineup over the summer.
"I told the girls that (Career) was good, but I know we can beat them," said Moriarty, who intends to play basketball at college and hopes it’s somewhere in Boston. "I had to make them believe it because I did. If we play together, we can beat anyone."
Of course, Moriarty led the way with 23 points, and East Haven went on to post a 58-52 win over the New Haven powerhouse. The Easties will enter the SCC tournament no worse than a No. 2 seed, ahead of both Career and Mercy-Middletown.
Despite its gaudy record, Moriarty still believes that most people still aren’t giving East Haven its due, and that’s fine with her. The Easties have also gotten solid contributions from improved center Ashley Harkins and guard Cathy Celotto. Nicole Esposito and Ashley Martone, a fine volleyball player, have helped East Haven claim the SCC Oronoque Division lead.
"We’ve got to prove to everybody that we can play," Moriarty said. "But if they want to look past us, that’s fine with me. We’ll show them in the end."
Moriarty won’t reach the 1,000-point mark. She’s averaging 13.7 points after scoring around 12 a game the previous two years. Blake is scoring nearly 17 points a game.
When the SCC tournament starts on Saturday, both star guards will be under the spotlight. It will be one of their final high school games and, in a way, they’re both dreading it.
"I just don’t want it to end," Moriarty said. "It’s going so fast."
Said Blake: "I can’t wait until next year at college, but I don’t want this season to end."
Two of a kind.