After Mount Vernon and New Rochelle renewed hostilities in a sold-out late-January jumpoff, with hordes of fans hawking security guards to let them inside New Rochelle’s jam-packed gym (fans were forced to wait outside in weather more brick than John Starks in Game 7 last Saturday, as every seat in New Ro’s standing room only gym was spoken for 45 minutes before the heavily-billed battle), Section I’s storied rivalry resumes this afternoon at Mount Vernon High School.
It’s Mount Vernon, the historic hoops hotbed of the 914 real estate.
It’s New Rochelle, a football school that’s re-emerged as regal basketball recruiting waters for scouts and coaches to test and approve.
It’s an endless tale of battles. And that’s why it’s intriguing.
Antoine Mason, the son of former hulking New York Knicks forward/West Fourth Street fixture Anthony Mason, is New Ro’s dieseled-up 6-foot-3 off guard.
Mason’s game has made waves this season, with his springy bounce garnering notice during New Rochelle’s 76-62 pasting of Catholic School power Iona Prep Saturday.
Young Mase scored 16 points, cracking his head on the gym ceiling with his prodigious vertical leap and multiple breath-borrowing bangers.
Mason also dropped 22 points–dialing in from downtown and attacking the tin– during New Ro’s come-from-behind 62-58 win over Mount Vernon in the aforementioned sell-out.
The 16-1 Huguenots have ripped off nine straight dubyas.
This gang of high-horsepower, high-flying New Rochelle ballers is easily the best since the Geoff McDermott-Ray Rice phenomenon of 2005.
McDermott, who helped rebuild the point forward art (which Ohio State’s Evan Turner has mastered) at Providence and Rice, currently an NFL Pro Bowl running back, reversed the curse while simultaneously re-writing the script in 2005.
The tandem helped lead a New Ro team hellbent on hanging a banner past a Mount Vernon squad featuring one of the best defenders in the nation in then-senior Chris Lowe.
Lockdown Lowe, a guard who prolonged his career at UMass (where slim recently wrapped up a solid four-year career) harassed then-senior Sebastian Telfair to 5-for-14 shooting during the 2004 federation championship game.
Telfair had been averaging a sublime 28 per his senior year, taking the NYC world by storm in the process. Lowe put the clamps on Bassy and shut down the high-motor guard.
The straightcoat job on Telfair helped put Mount Vernon, led by then-seniors Dexter Gray and Keith “K-Rucker” Benjamin that season, on the national map.
Mount Vernon won that federation title game but the scene, peculiarly enough, was left out of the 2006 Bassy film, “Through The Fire.”
Lowe, however, was denied a second straight Section I championship ring when MV encountered the well-batteried Rice-McDermott buzz saw at
the Westchester County Center in the 2005 Section I championship.
Mount Vernon has won every Section I championship since.
Clearly, there’s some heavy history between these two Section I/Class AA foes.
With New Rochelle enjoying its most prosperous season in half a decade, however, a rebuilding Mount Vernon squad has experienced some growing pains.
While glossy guard Jabarie Hinds lit up New Ro for 22 back on Jan.31–hurting the Huguenots off the bounce and going to the rack at will– the southpaw was exposed during the Knights recent trip up the Merrit Parkway to New Haven, Conn.
Hinds was held to just 11 points in a loss to Connecticut power Hillhouse. He was victim to a box-and-one defense and was outdueled by Fred Wilson Jr., who hit up the Knights for a 21-spot.
New Ro eked out a monster resume win last time against the Knights, and they’re certainly riding the high after pulverizing Iona Prep at home.
Can New Ro make it two straight, cementing their status as the team to beat?
Can the Huguenots handle the daunting task of defeating Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon at MVHS, a hostile atmosphere that opponents fear?
Find out today at Mount Vernon High School, as yet another page in this storied rivalry is written.
