As the snows of winter melt and the temperatures start to rise all things start to grow again, and UHoops Montvale is no different. The league has brought back some old faces and incorporated some new ones to expand at the start of the Spring 2016 season.

The first game of the new season saw the defending champion Ferrall Ballerz meet the GOATs, a new team that combines some players from previous seasons. The Ballerz took advantage of the GOATs not being familiar with each other right away and built an early 11-2 lead after Justin Leon (16 pts, 9 reb, 5 ast) sandwiched a jumper between a Vinnie Graff (14 pts, 8 ast, 6 reb, 3 stl) 3-pointer and elbow jumper. The only points early for the GOATs in the first 8 minutes came from James Miccio (12 pts, 5 reb, 3 stl, 2 ast) baskets until a Marselis Middleton (9 pts, 7 reb) floater and a Jeff Kreismer (9 pts) circus layup brought the score down to 19-11. But then, Dan Bronstein (15 pts) made a layup despite getting fouled and when his free throw wouldn’t fall for the three-point play, he got another chance off of the Ballerz offensive rebound and nailed a jumper to push the lead up to 12 (23 -11). The distance between the two teams would continue to grow and made it up to 39-14 at halftime.

The GOATs tried to regroup after the break and cut into the deficit by using the deep ball but the shots wouldn’t fall as they shot only 19% from behind the arc. The Ballerz turned the misses from the deep shots into deep passes that led to easy transition baskets and a deep deficit for the GOATs. The Ballerz cruised to an easy 67-37 win to start their quest for a 3rd straight championship.

The middle game of the night saw the return of a familiar competitor match-up with a perennial contender when Old School played the Bergen Tropics. Despite taking last season off, Old School showed no rust in their first action with Victor Cividini (18 pts, 11 reb) and Thomas Alexiou (14 pts, 12 reb) taking the ball down low and to the basket from the opening tip to help Old School jump out to a quick 8-0 lead. The Tropics stayed mostly outside and their jumpers just wouldn’t fall until Jason Fond (8 pts, 6 rec, 3 ast) got them on the board 6 minutes into the game with a pair of free throws. Old School continued to use great movement and attack the basket as they extended their lead to 19-4 just over 10 minutes into the game with everything coming from around the rim except for a William Allen (23 pts, 4 ast, 3 reb) 3-pointer. The gap between the teams continued to widen as the Tropics couldn’t to struggle offensively and by halftime Old School held a 31-7 advantage.

In the second half, Dan Gashi (13 pts, 10 reb, 3 stl) tried to get his team back into things but the Tropics just couldn’t consistently score throughout the game (24% FG, 15% 3’s, 56% FT’s) while Old School used their motion offense to get high quality shots and capitalized (52% FG, 33% 3’s) to win the game going away with a final score of 64-31.

In the nightcap, Uncle Chubby’s added a few new faces to replace guys lost from last season and took on the former Cowboys, who added some new players of their own to form the Justice League. Those fresh faces paid off big to lead both teams in scoring respectively. Both teams struggled early to get the offense going early but Brandon Danziger (13 pts, 7 reb) took the ball down low for Justice League to try and make things happen. On the other side, Chris Turisi (10 pts, 3 ast) hit a few shots for Chubby’s and by halftime they were locked dead even at 17-17.

In the second half, Justice League was able to get themselves a small lead of 4 points that they just refused to give up despite Skender Agic (14 pts, 4 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl) trying to get Chubby’s back to even. While Chubby’s had the same output offensively both halves, Justice League started to click a little more with 28 points in 2nd frame despite imploring a slow-down offense in the game’s final few minutes. As the game started to wind down an easy lay-in from Evan Schumer (14 pts) helped to extend the lead so that by the final horn Justice League had double digit advantage (45-34).

To see the rest of the highlights from the start of the Spring Season check out our Week 1 playlist on YouTube

Before the night got under way, Scott Ferrall caught up with Sebastian Stryker and Jeff Kreismer to talk about their outlook for the GOATs season