By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher BUENA VISTA — The Holy Spirit High School boys basketball team got off to a great start this year. The Spartans were 9-0, flying high, putting on dunk shows nearly every game. Press clippings were all unicorns and rainbows. Then the schedule got tougher, the pressure cranked up, and the next thing you know they were coming into Saturday night’s matchup with St. Augustine Prep at the Shoot Down Cancer Classic as underdogs. The host Hermits (15-2) were the media darlings of the moment, the young team that was putting it all together behind slick sophomore point guard Sa’eed Nelson and steamrolling toward the playoffs. The Spartans were thinking, hey, wait a minute, we’re the big dogs here. But after a buzzer-beater loss to Eastern, another tough loss to Wildwood Catholic and a loss to Atlantic City in the Battle by the Bay, questions were being raised while rankings dropped. 
Holy Spirit players John Middleton, left, and Junior Saintel celebrate after Saintel blocked a 3-point attempt by St. Augustine to seal a 47-44 win by the Spartans in the Shoot Down Cancer Classic. (Glory Days Magazine photos/Dave O’Sullivan) Saturday night was a chance for the Spartans to prove they could handle the pressure of big-game atmosphere in front of a packed house — the kind of situation they will find themselves in when the playoffs roll around. They answered their critics with a 47-44 win over the upstart Hermits, who came in with just one loss. It wasn’t pretty, as Holy Spirit (14-4) gave up an early lead and was outplayed for much of the third quarter, but the maturation process of this group of players was clearly evident. Facing high expectations from the first tipoff of the season, in their four losses the Spartans lost their composure a bit at crunch time. But head coach Jamie Gillespie believes in playing a tough schedule and prior to facing the Hermits had stressed to his group that they had to start playing tough, focused basketball for 32 minutes if they wanted to have any kind of postseason success. “One thing I’ve said to everybody is that we are going to be battle tested. I’ll put our schedule up against anybody. We’ve played Roman Catholic, Atlantic City, Eastern, Paulsboro, Wildwood Catholic. And next Saturday we play undefeated Haddonfield and we play Atlantic City again after that,” Gillespie said. “There’s nobody that can say we’re not battle-tested. That’s what you want. You want them in pressure environments so that when it really means something, they’ve been there before and they are not fazed by the pressure.” Gillespie said he liked the way his team responded when St. Augustine made a run to take a 20-17 lead and then held the Spartans scoreless for the first three minutes of the second half. “To me these are the fun games. These are the games you coach and you play for. Coming off last Saturday’s loss (to Wildwood Catholic), I’m really proud of our kids,” Gillespie said. “What I’ve learned is we have a really tough group of kids. They responded with three road wins this week when it would have been easy for them to bury their heads. “They didn’t, they came back and worked and went on the road to beat Millville, which at that point was 12-1. We got a really quality, solid win that night and played well on Thursday night against Vineland and came in here with some confidence.” The game was back-and-forth throughout the fourth quarter. Junior Saintel, a senior, helped seal the win by blocking a 3-pointer. Jordan Taylor then hit a free-throw to make it 47-44 with 4.9 seconds left, and Nelson’s 3-point attempt at the buzzer rimmed out. “I was originally supposed to take the freshman, Justyn Muttz, but I just deflected it. That was a big block,” said the 6-foot-7 Saintel. “This was huge for us … this environment is tough to play in.” Gillespie said he was impressed with the Hermits, particularly Nelson, who he knew would give his defense fits. 
St. Augustine sophomore Sa’eed Nelson, a Pleasantville resident, gave the Holy Spirit defense fits all night and finished with a team-high 13 points. “They are a well-coached program, disciplined, smart, they do a lot of good things. But we defended really well collectively and I thought we did a nice job on Sa’eed. He’s got the ability to impact the game in a lot of different ways and you can’t defend him with one guy. You have to defend as a group, and I think we did that tonight,” Gillespie said. “I’ve played against him since we were little,” said Holy Spirit junior John Middleton, who, along with Nelson, is a Pleasantville resident. “We just came together as a team. We knew what we had to do and did it. This was real big for us. We had to get our composure back. We lost some big games and we had to come back and win a big one.” Said Saintel of the ultra-quick 5-foot-8 dynamo, “You can’t just defend him by yourself, it has to be a group effort. He’s a great point guard who sees the whole floor. If you can slow him down, you can slow them down.” Nelson did lead the Hermits with 13 points, but for the most part the Spartans held him in check. Middleton led the Spartans with 14 points and five rebounds, and Saintel chipped in 10 points. “One of the things we wrote on the board before the game was that we were going to play for 32 minutes tonight. We broke every huddle and said ’32’ and we had to play for every last second of the 32 minutes, and that’s what it boils down to in a game like this. It could have gone either way,” Gillespie said. “When things get hard we have to talk to each other and not put each other down,” Saintel said. “We played for 32 minutes tonight and we proved that we can play with anybody.” Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays
Holy Spirit’s maturation process evident in key win over St. Augustine Prep
