In the dead of winter when fans pack high school gyms to watch two good basketball teams, they’re not thinking about the heat and humidity of summer.
Oftentimes, however, those teams they are watching used the dog days to improve by molding each individual into a better version of themselves. And the better the competition, the more they improved.
Which is why, for the second straight summer, Connor Hayes has taken his Robbinsville High boys team to Jersey City to play in the ultra-competitive Hamilton Park Summer League. Games are played at Dickinson High School and some of the state’s top teams participate, including Patrick, Hudson Catholic and St. Peter’s Prep among others.
Trenton gives the league a second Colonial Valley Conference participant, but Hayes is more interested in teams he doesn’t see in January.
“It’s just a different style of play than a lot of teams are gonna play us around here,” he said. “We can get our guys to see different situations that we may get into when we play in those bigger games down the stretch of the season. It’s just nice to not play the same teams.
“With the CVC we play each other multiple times a year sometimes. It’s nice to just get different looks without scouting reports or anything like that. Just figuring out on the go how to try and win a game.
“You just see different size up there, that’s the biggest thing. We just played Snyder on Friday, they had two 6-7, 6-8 guys. The day before we played Hudson Catholic, they had a 6-9 dude. Earlier in the summer we played (Patrick) and they had 6-10, 6-8, 6-8. The size is a big difference.”
Pat Kapp, the Ravens lone returning senior with ample experience, welcomes the change.
“The competition is very good,” he said. “We just played St. Peter’s Prep and Hudson Catholic and they had kids with D-I offers, and some Top 10 kids in the state. That’s very good competition to get us better. And the CVC doesn’t have that much height. It’s not like there’s a 6-5 giant in the CVC. So it’s definitely helping us playing against stronger, bigger kids and learning how to shoot over them.”
During the past three seasons, Robbinsville went 50-18 and reached the Mercer County Tournament semifinals in 2020 and the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group 3 finals in 2022. During that time they had standout scoring threats in Ryan Smith and Brian Herbert.
With Herbert’s graduation, this becomes the key year for the Ravens to show that they are becoming what Hayes wants them to be – a solid program year in and year out. It’s true that Luke Billings will return as a solid scorer, but he had Herbert to take the pressure off in his first two years.
“We gotta work on our scoring,” Kapp said. “Brian Herbert had 60 percent of the scoring. And we have to buckle down on our defense. The more we score and the less turnovers we have will just make it easier for us to win CVC.”
Despite Herbert’s output, Kapp is quick to note he can be replaced by committee.
“Everyone thought that Herbert was our entire team, but that’s because they didn’t see anything else other than Herbert,” the forward said. “They didn’t see the people behind him who gave Herbert all that competition in practice to get him better. So we’ll definitely show a lot. I think the CVC will be shocked by what we can do.”
The Ravens summer performance has helped give Kapp such confidence.
“We’re seeing a lot of people step up more than last year,” he said. “We haven’t seen this side of these people. It’s nice to see them start to show their true selves.”
And that’s what has to happen as this was seen as an important summer for each player to get better and make up for Herbert’s loss.
“We’re feeling good about what we’ve done,” said Hayes, whose team was 7-7 and tied for ninth (out of 22 teams) on July 18. “We always tell our guys, you become a better basketball player in the off-season. In the season is when we become a better team. That’s when we take all these better pieces that have improved over the summer and kind of gel them together within the season to make the best team possible.”
Robbinsville also has between 15 and 25 players showing up for open gym in the summer, but only nine are on the Hamilton Park roster (although guest players are allowed if someone can’t make it). The regular players include seniors Kapp and Leron Saunders, juniors Tyler Handy, Evan Bunnell, Dylan Golizio and Jack Miller, sophomores Marcus Rodolphe and Matt Boss and freshman Tyler Bunnell. Billings, a Wake Forest baseball recruit, is not playing in order to concentrate on his main sport.
Of that group, only Kapp, Handy and Bunnell have seen ample varsity time, so there are a lot of guys Hayes wants to see step it up.
“Our main focus this summer is getting these younger guys — who we expect to step right into the rotation in some circumstances – used to high-level varsity competition,” the coach said. “Fortunately the Jersey City league does this for us. It just gets them into situations they probably haven’t been in between freshman games, JV games and in some instances middle school games. Just getting them used to seeing big bodies, athletic bodies. Seeing guys that are gonna be aggressive and how we want to handle those situations.”
Kapp has the most experience among summer league players and has been steady along with Saunders, who was a JV starter.
“Pat has been consistent,” Hayes said in mid-July. “He’s hit his outside shots, he can rebound, push the ball in transition, drive to the basket. He’s really continuing to take the next step in his progression as a really good high school basketball player.”
“This is the first summer we’ve seen Leron every day and you can see the growth from the first summer workouts to now. He had his best day of games against competitive teams when we played Hudson Catholic and St. Peter’s (teams play two games per night).”
The Bunnell brothers have also looked good.
“Evan Bunnell has been a big piece,” Hayes said. “He had a near 40-point game against Hudson Catholic that we lost in overtime. They were undefeated at the time. He’s continuing to develop his outside shot, and his inside footwork is continuing to develop.
“His brother Tyler is gonna be a freshman, he has a real big, athletic body. Somebody like that, getting a lot of experience up there is great. Coming from middle school to that level of competition is a huge jump but it’s something he hasn’t really backed down to at all.”
Handy has shown potential ever since he took the floor against Nottingham’s varsity as a freshman in the Colonial Valley Conference Pod A championship game. The point guard continues to get better.
“He’s had a phenomenal summer up there,” Hayes said. “A lot of teams try to take him away pretty early once they realize he’s a major threat.”
Rodolphe and Boss are “sophomores that are making the most of every opportunity. They’re showing us we can depend on them in crunch time situations because they’ve seen it 14 times already this summer.”
Hayes noted that Boss is a strong outside shooter, good cutter and solid ball handler who just needs to attack more with the ball. Rodolphe is a “lights out shooter” who has buried shots all summer.
“We have a ton of confidence in those two guys moving into the season,” the coach said.
As for the juniors, Miller has had “a very good summer” at point guard while Golizio has improved his perimeter shooting at off guard and wants the ball at crunch time.
“He won’t back down from anybody in any situation,” Hayes said. “If it’s a three-point game with two seconds left on the clock he wants a play drawn up for him to take that shot.”
How this will all transcend into the regular season remains to be seen but, if the old cliche’ of steel sharpens steel has any credence to it, Robbinsville will be as ready as possible to try and show it’s a program with staying power.
Robbinsville rising senior Pat Kapp says the Ravens participation in Jersey City’s Hamilton Park League can only help when the regular season begins.,
