Looking back at IHS’ magical season 30 years ago

IRVINGTON, NJ — Thirty years ago, the Irvington High School boys basketball team had the school community and township in a tizzy.

The Blue Knights, under then-head coach Kurt Fenchel, enjoyed a magical 24-2 season, winning the second of four straight Essex County Tournament titles before capturing another New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4 tournament title. 

Irvington then got payback when it defeated Shawnee 71-67 to capture the NJSIAA Group 4 state championship held at Rutgers University in Piscataway in a rematch of the Group 4 final in the previous year won by the Medford school in Burlington County. 

It was their first state group championship. It also was the last time the Blue Knights won a state group championship. Three years ago, the Blue Knights advanced to the NJSIAA Group 3 state championship game against Timber Creek, but the game was canceled due to the COVID–19 pandemic. It also marked the first time they made it to a state group title game since the 1992-93 season. 

Fenchel recalled the 1992-93 team during a phone interview with the Irvington Herald on Wednesday, Feb. 22. He said the team showed tremendous camaraderie that was pivotal in its sensational season. What was also remarkable about the 1992-93 season was the fact that the Blue Knights graduated 10 of 12 players, including all five starters, from the previous season when they advanced to the state championship game for the first time in the program’s history.  

“That team was special because we were like a family,” Fenchel said of the 1992-93 squad. “Everybody got along. We played well with each other. It was a whole new group from the year before. The year before, we went to the Group 4 final (against) Shawnee. This was a whole different team from the year before, and Shawnee had the exact same team (from the 1991-92 season). (Shawnee) was very, very good, and we ended up beating them. A lot of these (Irvington players) sat on the bench the year that we lost to Shawnee, then the next year, they ended up being ‘the guys.’”

The top players for the 1992-93 Blue Knights were junior guard Terry Naylor, junior forward Tyronne Sabb, senior guard  and co-captain Sulaimon Abdullah, senior guard and co-captain Eugene “Bam” Robinson and junior 6-foot-6 center Maurice Bullock, as well as sophomore Ramadon Brunson, and junior forwards Damon Rasberry and Rasheed Coleman. Sabb and Abdullah were the lone key returning players. Sabb, Bullock and Rasberry provided a physical presence in the paint.

Irvington suffered its only loss of the regular season against Union 61-54 in an old Watchung Conference game.

The Blue Knights won a thrilling 50-49 overtime decision against Clifford Scott High School in the North 2, Group 4 sectional championship game in a matchup of Essex County powers. A few weeks prior, the two teams met in the Essex County championship, with Irvington winning 66-62.

In the sectional final, Irvington outscored East Orange-based Clifford Scott 8-7 in overtime. It was the third time that Irvington beat Clifford Scott that season. 

Robinson, a future IHS boys basketball head coach, hit two 3-pointers in overtime and finished with 11 points. Naylor led the Blue Knights with 15 points, while Abdullah and Sabb had 8 and 7 points, respectively. 

“It’s tough to beat a team twice and we had just beaten them in the Essex County final, and then we had to meet them a week-and-a-half later in the sectional final,” said Robinson in a phone interview with the Irvington Herald on Friday, March 3. 

Robinson became the Blue Knights head coach at the start of the 2002-03 season, guiding the program for 12 seasons. He led Irvington to the sectional final in the 2012-13 season, but the team lost to a strong Newark East Side squad. Robinson left Irvington after the following season and has been the head boys basketball coach at nearby Columbia High School in Maplewood for the past nine seasons.

Irvington and Clifford Scott built an intense rivalry. “Back then, the rivalries were a little bit more intense, because guys weren’t transferring from school to school,” Robinson recalled. “The rivalries were a lot deeper than they are today. (Clifford Scott) coach (Greg) Tynes, who was the head coach at the time, me and him are great friends now, and we talked about that game and the Essex County final, and I just felt that Scott was a good team that year, but we were better. If we weren’t there, they probably would have won the Essex County Tournament and the sectional tournament, but they just couldn’t get past us.”

After beating Clifford Scott, the Blue Knights cruised to a 72-56 win over Section 1 champion Hackensack in the Group 4 state semifinal.

The Blue Knights faced Shawnee again in the state championship in a matchup of two of the best teams in the state. Shawnee was ranked No. 1 and Irvington was No. 4 in the state by the Star-Ledger. Shawnee’s only loss of the season going into the game was against a Rasheed Wallace-led Simon Gatz team from Philadelphia, Pa. Shawnee’s top players included three Division 1 collegiate signees – senior guard Danny Earl (Penn State and current head coach at Tennessee–Chattanooga), senior center Kirk Luchman (Florida State), and sophomore guard Brian Earl (Princeton and current head coach at Cornell).

The Blue Knights got their revenge with the four-point win over Shawnee to extend their winning streak to 18 games. Naylor led Irvington with 18 points, Sulaiman Abdullah had 16, Robinson had 13 and Sabb had 10. 

Bullock, the 6-foot-6 center for the Blue Knights, remembered the raucous Shawnee fans during the game at Rutgers. He also remembered how Naylor missed the team bus and didn’t arrive at the game until about five minutes before tipoff. Naylor went out and still had a phenomenal game. “It seemed like everything was going our way that year,” said Bullock, in a phone interview with the Irvington Herald on Friday, March 3.

After graduating from Irvington, Bullock continued his career at Texas A&M-Commerce and later played professionally in the Continental Basketball Association in Texas. Bullock currently lives in Dallas, Tex. and works in private security.

Following the Group 4 final, the Blue Knights played in the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions. They were the No. 2 seed, but lost to third-seeded and Group 2 state champion Middle Township 66-55 in the semifinals to end their glorious run. Middle Township was led by LaMarr Greer, a McDonald’s All-American who played at Florida State. Middle Township then lost to famed St. Anthony of Jersey City, under legendary head coach Bob Hurley Sr. 

Robinson said Irvington was looking ahead to facing St. Anthony. “We were so ready to face St. Anthony,” Robinson said. “We took a bad time to play a bad game (against Middle Township). Hats off to Middle Township, they were good. That game always bothered me because we didn’t play our best game, not one of our better games, honestly. As a group, I don’t think we were locked in. We were talking more about St. Anthony’s and the matchups, like who was going to guard who. We were already assuming that we were there (in the final). And Middle Township was good.”

Though they didn’t end up at the top, the Blue Knights were satisfied that they played well together as a team during the season.

“That team, we didn’t care about (statistics), or about individual stuff,” Robinson said. “We just played, man. Me, being on the other side of that now, being a coach, I appreciate that team a lot more than I did when I actually played, because it’s not easy to have a group of kids like that, and that’s why we were so successful as a group.”

Despite Irvington losing so many players to graduation from the previous season, Robinson knew his senior year would be special. 

“Back then, nobody went to Catholic schools,” he said. “We knew how good we were going to be. My senior year, the group would be a better team defensively, so we knew we had different strengths, but we knew we would be as good, or better.”

Robinson particularly appreciated the guidance from Fenchel. 

“Fench was a lot of fun,” Robinson said. “As a coach myself, I take a lot of things from different coaches that I had. He was sort of like a free-spirit coach, he was a lot of fun, but then he was serious and he treated everybody equal, but he didn’t treat everybody the same, because everybody was an individual, but we were all held accountable to a standard, and that worked for us. A lot of these small things that I like to take into my own coaching style, those are some of the things I took from Fench.”

Bullock remembered how the whole town was so enamored with the team, but Fenchel made sure the players stayed grounded. “Being from Irvington and going to school out there, we were like rock stars,” Bullock said. “We had that rock-star mentality, but Fench kept us humble. He and (assistant) coach (Warren) Moxley kept us humble. In the beginning, we hated (Fenchel) because of the way he made us work. But he kept telling us, ‘It’s going to pay off, it’s going to pay off. Stay patient, stay patient.’ He prodded us on defense.”

Most of Irvington’s opponents had high-scoring players, but the Blue Knights featured a balanced scoring attack, Bullock said. Fenchel devised a different plan for each game and a different Irvington player “whose number was called that day, and it just worked,” said Bullock.

Another of Bullock’s favorite highlights was the Watchung Conference win over Elizabeth High School during the regular season. Bullock said nobody outside of Irvington expected the Blue Knights to beat Elizabeth.

After the loss in the Tournament of Champions, Fenchel left Irvington and was succeeded by his assistant coach, Larry Blase. Fenchel went on to win sectional titles at Franklin and Manasquan and is currently an assistant coach at Brookdale Community College, which was ranked No. 5 in the country this season. Brookdale has won two national titles, including a perfect 34-0 season, and was a national runner-up two other times.

Fenchel attended the Blue Knights’ first-round North 2, Group 4 sectional game against Franklin this season. He sat in the stands and was thrilled to chat with many of his friends and former players from both schools. Franklin beat Irvington, which finished a stellar 19-8 season.

Indeed, Fenchel will always have a special place in his heart for that Group 4 champion Irvington team that was inducted into the IHS Athletic Hall of Fame in May 2018. 

“It was just a terrific season,” Fenchel said. “It was just a family atmosphere, right from the get-go.”

Fenchel and several players from the 1992-93 team attended the 2018 IHS Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony held at IHS. That was the first time in several years that IHS held an induction ceremony. The IHS Athletic Hall of Fame was dormant before Dr. John Taylor, in his first year as the IHS athletic director, revived it.

  Irvington High School boys basketball