Wolves Clinch Play-off Spot

On Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 the Grand Street Campus Wolves had the opportunity to play in front of their home crowd in a must win game for the Wolves facing the Harry Van Arsdale Cardinals(5-5). GSC won in their last meeting in a low scoring game at Harry Van Arsdale Educational Campus.

The Wolves started the game hot, picking the Cardinals pocket back to back times resulting in a three pointer and an easy lay-up putting the Wolves up 10-4 with five minutes in the first quarter. The Cardinals quickly caught up tying the game at 14 to end the first. The large crowd roared as the Wolves rained three's hitting five in just the second quarter. GSC's seven point run led them to a score of 38-29 to end the half. The Wolves had a nice balance of scoring with players Jeremy Guzman, Lawahn Lewis, and Joel Banton scoring 10+ points in the first half.
"When need to execute on defense and cause turnovers, we need to cause the other team to play chaotic" Coach Sharpe said when asked what they needed to do to maintain their lead. And that's what they did holding the Cardinals to 32 points with four minutes left in the third while the Wolves continued to dominate behind the arc with much help from Joel Banton who hit four threes in the 3rd and 4th quarter. The Wolves handled the Cardinals in the third quarter leading by 20 points at one point. As GSC continued to rack up points they found themselves fouling consistently, which caused much controversy between the Wolves and officials who put the Cardinals at the line four times in a row which they made 6 of; reducingtheir deficit. "OFFENSIVE FOUL!" despite missing a few shots and sending the Cardinals to the line, the Wolves found away to silence the opposing teams cheering fans by taking a charge; the coaching staff was absolutely ecstatic. Joel Banton iced the game with another 3 pointer with 1:36 seconds left in the game.
The crowd yelled in support of the Wolves bench and also sung "Hey hey hey good bye" with help from the cheerleaders while the Cardinals spent their last trip at the line. While the Wolves and Cardinals

exchanged rather friendly words "good game man" and hugs, the attention quickly grew to what looked like a badly injured Wolves player Jeremy Guzman, but as the Wolves do, he got up and walked his way toward the Cardinal players to shake hands. In previous games Coach Sharpe established the fact that the Wolves needed to close out games better, this is what he had to say concerning this game "We did exactly what we need to do; we stayed focused in the last two quarters and made the other team pay when they made a mistake".
The Wolves definitely showed up and showed out with an impressive win against the Cardinals. The Wolves now 7-4 will face their toughest opponent on the road against the Global Studies and International Studies Jaguars(9-1),who have beaten Grand Street Campus by nine points in mid-December, on January 18th, 2012. The Harry Van Arsdale(5-6) will play the Dr. Susan Mckinney School of Art Kings(0-10) also on the eighteenth.

Leading Scorer: Joel Banton 30 points
Leading Rebounder: Isaiah Sylvan 6 rebounds
Assist Leader: Jeremy Guzman 9 assist