Tier I Championship Preview: #4 TABC vs. #10 MDY
- Marvin Azrak
- Mar 31
- 2 min read
This is it. The National Championship of Jewish High School Basketball. Seven months of grinding. Four years of dreaming for these seniors. One game to define it all.
The Max Stern Athletic Center is going to be electric. Both fan bases are showing in full white-out mode, tickets are sold out, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
TABC has looked like the best team in this tournament, and it’s not particularly close. They cruised through their first two games and handled YULA with a level of control that made one thing clear—this team is built for this moment. The most impressive part? Eyal Kinderlehrer didn’t even have a big scoring night against YULA, and the Storm still found a way to oust the top-seed and reigning champions. That’s what makes them so dangerous. Focus too much on their star, and the rest of the squad will make you pay.
Conversely, we have Magen David—the lowest seed to ever reach a Sarachek final. This team has been playing with house money all tournament, hasn’t won this thing since 2002, but refuses to die.
Four wins, a combined margin of 14 points. Do the Warriors live on the edge? And that edge has carried them all the way here. They defeated Flatbush in the play-in game during the first Sarachek installment of the Syrian Civil War, took down #7 North Shore, then the second-seeded Shalhevet, and then survived a thriller against #6 Berman. Now, they’re staring at history.
Team of Destiny? Maybe. For MDY to pull off one last miracle, this game has to be fast. High-scoring. Chaos. They can’t slow this down and let TABC dictate the pace. Senior superstar Joshua Chabbott will have to play the game of his life. They’ll need to push the tempo, hit threes, and somehow find a way to slow down Kinderlehrer inside. If they let TABC play at their rhythm, this could get away from them fast. One game. 32 minutes. Everything is on the line. Will TABC cap off a dominant tournament with a championship? Or will Magen David complete one of the most excellent Cinderella runs in Sarachek history? Regardless, this one is going to be unique.
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