Young Knights looking to improve
By: Bob Nuse
For as long as he can remember, Conor Hayes has enjoyed being on the basketball court.
"I’ve been playing basketball since I was 4 years old," said Hayes, now a junior at West Windsor-Plainsboro High North. "I started early and played with the older kids. My dad was the one who really introduced me to it. He played basketball in college at Dartmouth and he’s been my coach for as long as I can remember. I just really like basketball as a sport and I love playing."
Last year was Hayes’ first full season with the varsity team at North, averaging seven points a game for a team that finished 8-15. This year, Hayes has had to take on more of a leadership and scoring role for the youthful Knights and he has responded well to the challenge.
After scoring 30 points in a 103-74 loss to unbeaten Delaware Valley on Saturday, Hayes leads North with a 15.8 points per game scoring average.
"Conor is a basketball player," said North coach Eric Becker, whose team slipped to 3-8 with the loss. "He competes and he’s as tough as nails. He and John Byrnes have been our most consistent players this year.
"Conor has been a great scorer for us and he also gets his share of rebounds for us. He gets about five rebounds a game and he’s only 6-foot-1. He’s a player who has great court savvy."
As happy as Becker has been with the scoring he has received from Hayes, he’s been even happier with the way the junior has emerged as a leader for the Knights.
"He’s been a catalyst," said Becker, whose team is back in action tonight against Hamilton. "He hates to lose and he does not cave in. He plays hard every minute. People look to him for leadership and he likes the pressure. He sprained his finger on Friday and then pumped in 30 points on Saturday. We want that kind of toughness to be contagious with the rest of the team. He’s a real student of the game and he wants to learn."
As well as he has been playing this season, Hayes knows he also still has a lot to learn about the game. In fact, as young as the Knights are this year, they all still have a lot to learn.
"We’re still a pretty inexperienced team," Hayes said. "So when it gets down to the end of games a lot of it comes down to certain plays and we just don’t have the maturity yet. Against Notre Dame, I made a big mistake toward the end of the game when I was arguing with the ref and got a technical. They got the foul shots and the ball and that hurt us. But those are the kind of things we have to learn from and get better with more experience."
Since opening the season 3-4, the Knights have dropped four in a row. But over those four games they have shown signs of becoming a better team.
"We lost three players from last year, but they were important players," Hayes said. "Brian Sufalko was our big scorer and Mike Pilgrim was our inside guy. So they’re tough to replace. This is sort of a rebuilding year for us, but we had still hoped to be doing better than we have been.
"I think our past three games have been three of our best of the year even though we’ve lost all three. We’re starting to play better and we’re showing improvement. We just need to be able to pull it out at the end."
Early in the season, it was the defense that helped the Knights to some wins. Now, the offense seems to be coming around as the younger players gain some experience.
"We played our two best offensive games of the season the last two games," said Becker, whose team closes out the week with games at Moorestown Friends (Wednesday) and Hightstown (Friday). "We were up six in the third quarter at Notre Dame and we played well. And we played well for the first half at Delaware Valley and then we just ran out of gas. It was probably a combination of being the third game of the week and playing a third tough game."
The 74 points the Knights scored on Saturday at DelVal were a season high. Unfortunately, they ran into a Delaware Valley team that was clicking on all cylinders.
"It was a strange game because it seemed like everybody was fast-breaking, but there were still mostly outside shots in the game," said Hayes, who played Saturday with his fingers taped after jamming his shooting hand on Friday. "They just shot the ball really well. They made 10 threes and shot 71 percent, which you don’t see very often."
Hayes is hoping that the lessons learned by the Knights this past week eventually pay off in wins. He has been able to enjoy some success in football, which is his newest sport. And now would like to see that same success on the basketball court.
"I didn’t play football until halfway through my freshman year," Hayes said. "I had some friends who were playing that convinced me I should give it a try. I had coach (Art) Stubbs as my coach for two weeks, then he got moved up to the varsity. Last year I played some on offense and defense and then this year I played even more. I really enjoy football."
And he’s enjoyed basketball his whole life. Now, he’s hoping to add some wins to that enjoyment.

