Father Judge head coach Sean Tait has been raving about Marc Rodriguez’s potential since he first stepped on to the floor last season as a freshman.
After Wednesday night’s performance, it’s easy to see why.
Rodriguez shot 8-for-10 from the field, including 6-for-8 on three-pointers, en route to a season-high 25 points, and the Crusaders dispatched visiting Bonner-Prendie 64–49 in a preliminary round Catholic League playoff clash. Rodriguez drilled a trio of treys in the first quarter and Judge led from start to finish, earning the right to advance to Friday night’s quarterfinals at top-seeded and six-time defending league champion Neumann-Goretti (7 p.m. tipoff). As a team, the hot-shooting Crusaders shot 11-for-22 from long-range, and it was their first postseason basketball victory in 16 years.
It was the most points any Judge player had scored in a league contest this season, and it was just the breakout performance Tait and company needed from its rising sophomore star.
“Our whole team, we can just shoot the lights out,” Rodriguez said. “We have so many shooters, and we constantly move the ball around so that it doesn’t stay in one person’s hands for a long period of time. There’s always a person who has the assist, and tonight my teammates did a great job of finding me open.”
Despite the fact that Rodriguez was not selected to the All-Catholic team, he turned in an all-league performance in Judge’s final home game of the season.
“Marc struggled from the field at times this season, but if you look at the box scores and you see 12, 13, 14 points,” Tait said. “For a sophomore in the Catholic League, that’s pretty damn good. I have to keep reminding people that he’s only a sophomore. He should have been an All-Catholic selection, and I don’t care about saying it. We’re a playoff team in the best league in the nation and we only have one All-Catholic (senior point guard Will Brazukas, chosen to the Third Team). The night after the vote, Marc was at the bus stop at 5 a.m. and in the gym shooting at 5:45. That’s just the type of kid he is. I think that performance tonight was a statement to the rest of the league that he’s an All-Catholic, regardless of how other coaches voted.”
Judge’s “prize” for beating Bonner is a trip to Neumann-Goretti, winners of the last six league titles. The Saints had four All-Catholic picks, including two on the First Team (guards Quade Green and Lamarr Kimble), and defeated the Crusaders by 30 on Feb. 6. Not a single person outside of the Judge locker room will pick the team to win, which is understandable; that said, don’t expect the Crusaders to just pack it in and not show up.
“I’d say as a team we have to play hard and smart and together as a team,” Rodriguez said. “We have to come out with the mindset that we belong on the same court as the six-time defending champions.”
“We’ll have to shoot pretty close to the way we did tonight,” Tait added. “What happened last time — and I’m not taking anything away from them, because they are very good — the Wednesday before we played them we had (third-seeded) Carroll here and we’re down six at halftime and seven with four minutes to go with a chance to make shots to make it even closer. Then, 48 hours later we’re at Neumann. We knew we were walking into a buzzsaw, and it just wasn’t our night.”
All along, Tait has said three things: he had hoped Judge would be a playoff team, that they would get to host a postseason game and then be a game away from the league semifinals.
Check, check and check.
“We understand things have to happen: they have to struggle from the perimeter or have foul trouble, but the point is anything can happen,” Tait said. “But it can’t happen if you don’t get to that game. You’ve seen our team … we walk into the gym and people ask where the varsity team is. But the fact is that this is the best league in the country and we’re 32 minutes away from the semis. And it’s not me, it’s these guys; I might put them in a position to make shots, but it’s all them, and they got us our first playoff win in 16 years.”
A big part of that was Rodriguez, who, as a sophomore, showed Bonner and the rest of the league that he has quite a future ahead of him.
“Honestly, it feels spectacular,” Rodriguez said. “The team works all year round, and you can see it’s starting to pay off. Playing last year as a freshman was hard, but I had the best coach, best point guard (Brazukas) and the best team in general. They made it a whole lot easier than it should be. Playing now, I get how the refs call a game, how I should play and act and how the team should play together. I think each year, I’m getting better with understanding that.”
