‘This is my Super Bowl’: Tales from JSBL opening night, where everyone has a story to tell

MANASQUAN – One of the great things about the Jersey Shore Basketball League is that everyone has a story to tell. A personal hoops journey that landed them in the Manasquan High School gym for Wednesday night’s doubleheader to open the league’s 56^th season.

Take Hazlet’s Mike Aaman, the 6-8 forward who led Raritan High School to the 2011 Shore Conference Tournament title, played two years for Dan Hurley at Rhode Island before three solid seasons at Wagner.

“This is my Super Bowl,” Aaman said. “All these guys play pro, they play college. I’m 30. I have a bum knee. I lost 21 pounds in three weeks just to get ready for this. This is just loving the game.”

It certainly is.

All Aaman did was score 37 points, on 16-of-25 shooting, and grab 17 rebounds to lead Ortho-NJ to a 115-107 win over Larson Ford, which got 30 points from Rutgers forward Aundre Hyatt and 26 from Nate Pierre-Louis, the former Roselle Catholic star now the NBA G-League.

“It’s a blast,” said Aaman, now a youth basketball coach. “I’m all basketball. I coach kids, I train kids, everything is basketball, basketball, basketball. So I’m investing in myself and hopefully in a few years I’ll be a college coach.”

Then there was the nightcap, in which Rutgers transfer guard Jordan Derkack poured in 39 points to lift an undermanned Sterns Trailer to a dominating 123-95 win over Sea View Jeep.

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With Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell in the stands – Pikiell’s son Kevin, a rising senior at CBA, was in the Sterns starting lineup – Derkack scored 27 points in the first half alone, hitting 16-of-26 from the floor for the game, while grabbing 12 rebounds.

It was the latest chapter in Colonia native’s homecoming story. He played three games early last season for Sterns Trailer before leaving for his sophomore season at Merrimack, where he was the Northeast Conference Player of the Year, before transferring to Rutgers.

“I’ve got my little brother (Aiden, who plays at Colonia High School) coming to this league, so I want to be able to play with him. I’ll be out of college by the time he gets there,” Derkack said.

“You figure out different things about yourself (in summer basketball). Today, I was shooting a little more than usual in terms of threes. I was just having a good time. That’s what the summer is about. Having fun, getting to know your teammates and doing your thing.”

Derkack, expected to have a key role on the Scarlet Knights’ talented young roster, has been together on the court with his new teammates for the first time over the past two weeks during workouts in Piscataway.

“It’s awesome” he said. “All the coaches, they have really bought into this. I can feel it. I have great teammates. Every day we go in there. I’ll be there at 6:30 tomorrow morning and we will be in the gym running around, talking to each other, yelling at each other, pressing each other, so it will be a good time.

“When you get to a certain level sometimes there’s egos, and I just don’t feel like there’s any on our team.”

It was night when players from all levels coalesced on the court, coming various points on the basketball landscape.

Former Monmouth star George Papas, for example, recently returned from his second season playing in Greece, heading overseas after having a first-team All-MAAC season for the Hawks in 2021-22. Papas scored 19 points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished out 10 assists for Ortho-NJ.

“It’s great to be back,” Papas said. “When you’re away from family and friends for 10 months it’s tough. But you make a good living, you have a good life and all you want to do is come back and be around your friends, especially my Monmouth boys, and play some ball.”

Papas, who has Greek citizenship, expects to return to Greece next season, although he’s not sure who he’ll be playing for just yet. Papas switched teams in the middle of last season, shifting from Olympiacos to Promethias.

“The bottom line was to try to get playing time,” Papas said. “It was a rough adjustment because where I was at Olympiacos, is such a good organization. It felt so right to be there. But I just wanted to be able to prove to myself that I can play on the pro level. I feel like I did a solid job. There’s definitely room to grow, not playing for a year-and-a-half and then going right onto the floor, but it was a good stepping-stone for where I want my career to go. It was a good experience.”

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: As Jersey Shore Basketball League opens, hoop journeys intertwine