Middlesex coach sees success on the horizon

BY GEORGE ALBANO Staff Writer

BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer

EDISON – “March Madness” came a little early for the Middlesex County College men’s basketball team this season.

The Colts recently completed an outstanding 2006-07 season that saw them finish a glossy 25-3, capture the Region 19 North championship, and come within one game of reaching the Junior College Division III national quarterfinals.

Quite a contrast from a year ago when Middlesex finished 3-21.

But first-year head coach Corey Lowery and his top assistant Chris Tarver came in this season and turned the Colts’ program around with a new attitude on the court and a renewed commitment in the classroom.

“Coach Tarver and I came in with a plan,” Lowery said. “The plan was to make academics a priority, to get the kids to go to study hall. The second thing was conditioning and a good weight plan.

“The last thing was basketball. We wanted to make the total student-athlete who will get educated in the classroom and then get educated basketball-wise. That’s the system we use in how we run a basketball program. We gave them discipline and parameters. Study hall was first, conditioning was second, and then practice. They had to be there from 4 to 9 at night and work hard.”

The new approach worked, and Middlesex County College became one of the biggest surprises in the region. And a pair of area players, Sean Ogunnoiki and Tim Wojcik, had a lot to do with that as they helped the Mustangs on and off the court.

Ogunnoiki, a 6-foot-1 freshman guard who played at Edison High School, appeared in 25 of MCC’s 28 games, mostly as a reserve. He averaged 9.7 points per game and shot 52.3 percent from the field, second on the team behind only leading scorer Hensley Charles.

Ogunnoiki also finished third on the team in rebounding with 4.9 a game to go along with two assists and 1.72 steals, which ranked 21st in the region.

“I got lucky with Sean. When I got here he was already there,” Lowery laughed. “Sean did a lot of things. He rebounded, he was a good outside shooter, he’d get you threes, he was a slasher, he was good in the lane as far as getting steals. He was the kind of guy who came off the bench and helped you a lot of ways.

“When Sean was in the game with one of our shooters, it opened up the game for our big guys,” Lowery added. “And when the opposing team was not watching him, he would hurt them. You

were not aware of it, but then you’d look at the box score after the game and see he hit three 3s, have eight or nine rebounds, two or three steals. He did a lot of things that were key to our success.”

Like the season-high 19 points, eight rebounds, two assists and two steals he had in a 95-74 win over Ocean County College on Feb. 10. Or the 17 points on 8-of-9 shooting he had in a 94-64 victory over Raritan Valley Community College, a game in which he also had four rebounds, four assists and five steals.

Ogunnoiki also recorded 14 points, eight rebounds and a season-high six steals against Lackawanna College, 13 points versus Cumberland County College, and 12 points and 10 rebounds in a win over Brookdale Community College.

Meanwhile, the 6-foot-2 Wojcik, a product of Sayreville High School, was one of only four sophomores on this year’s MCC team. A guard/forward, Wojcik was also one of the few holdovers from last year’s three-win squad who saw considerably less playing time this year, averaging 2.8 points in 19 games.

But that doesn’t even begin to measure his true value to the Colts.

“Tim was the leader on our team,” Lowery pointed out. “He brought a lot of maturity. He didn’t see a lot of time, but he would always talk to the young kids on the team about focusing on doing what they had to do.

“He was an excellent, positive role model. A lot of guys couldn’t go from playing 25, 30 minutes one year to playing maybe five minutes the next. But Tim stayed positive the entire year. It didn’t matter if he played one minute or 20 minutes. Whatever he could do to help the team win, he’d do it.”

When given the chance, Wojcik certainly made the best of it. Like in the win over Raritan Valley CC when he recorded season-highs of 10 points and six rebounds.

He also came up big in the postseason. Middlesex drew a first-round bye in the Region 19 tournament, then defeated Union County College, 95-65, in the second round and Brookdale Community College, 81-77, in the Region 19 North Division final.

That was the Colts’ 14th straight win (they also won eight in a row earlier in the season), but their season ended in the next game when they lost to South Division champion Gloucester County College, 94-84, in the Region 19 title game.

But not before Wojcik made his final game in a Colts uniform a memorable one.

“We lost two of our starters to fouls and were down by seven points,” Lowery explained. “But Tim came off the bench and right away hit a 3-pointer to cut the margin to four. It gave us life.

“Unfortunately, not enough, and we still lost, but Tim played well.”

A win in that game would have earned Middlesex CC a berth in the National JuCo Division III Elite Eight.

“We were hoping to go to the National Tournament, but we fell just a little short,” Lowery said. “But I’m very proud of where this team came from and the hard work they put in. I think the guys worked as hard as they could for me.

“I think this group set the foundation of where we want to go. I kind of label these guys the founding forefathers. They set the stage for what we’re gonna do in the future. I’ll always remember this team as the one that laid the foundation.”

When the season started, two more former area players were also on the Middlesex roster. Keith Liceaga, a 6-4, 195-pound freshman forward who played at Old Bridge High School, only got into one game before health issues sidelined him for the rest of the season.

“Keith was a hard worker, always in good condition,” Lowery said. “He had some skills. He was a good kid who worked hard and helped us in practice while he was with us.”

Lowery said there’s a possibility Liceaga could return next season.

Chris McElderry, a 6-5, 200-pound freshman forward out of Woodbridge High School, played in 10 games and averaged 2.9 points before leaving the team.

The Colts’ turnaround was also evident on the stat sheet. They excelled on both ends of the court, leading the region in both offense (81.7 ppg) and defense (66.4). In fact, they scored 94 or more points 11 times, including over 100 on five occasions.

Middlesex was also first in free-throw shooting, hitting 84.6 percent of its shots (the next nearest team was 69.9), and was tied for first with a 50.8 field goal percentage.

Then again, maybe MCC’s sudden success shouldn’t have come as that big of a surprise. After all, Lowery has always been associated with winning basketball programs. Prior to coming to Middlesex, he was an assistant coach at Bloomfield College, which won the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference in his one season there.

He was also an assistant for three years and head coach for four seasons at Hillside High School, which he led to a pair of Mountain Valley Conference championships and two state sectional finals.

Now Corey Lowery is apparently working the same kind of magic at Middlesex Community College, and he plans to do it with local athletes.

“I plan to recruit in Middlesex County and Monmouth County,” he said. “We’re centrally located. Kids 25, 30 minutes to the north can drive down here, and kids 25, 30 minutes to the south can come up. The talent is definitely here.”