All-Time UH Team: New York
Mike Mastro
We posted an article giving a few UH legends 2K ratings last Friday to celebrate the release of NBA 2K20. We’re going to keep the momentum going this week by releasing our own version of All-Time Teams, just like 2K has in this year’s game. I reached out to multiple UH staff members in multiple regions to get their picks for an all-time starting five in their respective region. The one caveat is a player has to have played 100 career games to be considered. Here is the All-Time UH New York Team, provided by Syosset and Garden City League Coordinator, Anthony Leo.
Mike Mastro
Every region has one obvious choice that you have to start a team with. For Vegas, it’s Chase Skinkis. For Arizona, it’s Donald Didlake. For Minnesota, it’s Paris Kyles. And for New York, it’s Hall of Famer Mike Mastro.
At a national level, he leads all of UH in rebounding, and when it comes to New York, he leads almost every category there is to lead. He has the most points, rebounds (obviously), assists, steals and blocks in UH New York history. Plus he’s tied with Jay Harris with 15 championships and he trails Harris by one win for the most in New York history. There’s really nothing else to say.
Jay Harris
Harris (14)
Speaking of Harris, he gets on the team easily as well due to his impressive resume. I mentioned the 15 titles, but they’re even more impressive because they’ve come in every type of league New York has to offer. He has open titles in Syosset, draft titles in Garden City and vet titles in Syosset. As mentioned above, he has the most wins in New York history, and he’s been able to do that by boasting a career winning percentage of .652.
He’s the best vet player the New York region has seen, as nine of his championships have come in the Syosset Vet League. Those have come with him averaging a double-double of 17.1 points and 11.3 rebounds on 49% shooting in the division.
Mastro and Harris are both overflowing with championship pedigree and are easy choices for this team.
Chris Frey
Frey may not have the championship resume to compare with Mastro or Harris, but he’s getting close. He does have two advantages over both of them though:
Frey has the highest winning percentage of the three, as his .786 trumps Mastro’s .743 and Harris’ .652.
Frey has won a national championship, which he did against Mastro in 2017.
But this isn’t a competition against his fellow New Yorkers, it’s a praise to all three of them. Frey has been a winner since starting his UH career in 2012, and that’s been on full display in recent seasons. He has won back-to-back-to-back Garden City Draft League championships, and his team, Shore Shack, won in the semifinals this week, giving him a chance at a fourth straight title.
Frey has proven to be one of, if not the best GM in all of UH New York, but he’s a damn good player as well, averaging 18.3/8.4/4.4 on 51% shooting in his UH career.
Tunde Ogunleye
Ogunleye
Ogunleye doesn’t have the longevity of the three previous players, as he started playing in 2015 and just makes the cut with 113 games, but he’s built up an undeniable resume in that time and he’s far too good of a player to leave off this team. We can start with his numbers: 27.3/9/3.6 with shooting splits of 58/42/67. The most impressive part of his stats are that he consistently performs at the national level as well: 17.9/5.6/3.7 with shooting splits of 52/42/75.
He’s a player that is automatically going to make any team better, as he’s not only an elite scorer, but an elite defender as well. Most teams that have him on their roster get used to winning, as his .752 winning percentage and six championships prove.
I do think this would have been a more controversial pick before this year’s New York National Tournament, where Ogunleye helped lead FMB to the championship. A national title significantly raises your national profile and your UH legacy, and that’s especially true for Ogunleye, who made the All-Tournament Team and was once again dominant at the national level.
Brandon Dominick
Dominick gets the final spot for two reasons: his championships and his scoring. He has 10 championships in his career, with eight of them coming over the course of seven years in the Syosset Open League. His most dominant run came between the Spring 2012-Winter 2013 seasons, where he won three titles over the course of four seasons, averaging 24.7 points in that year-span. That’s slightly above his average of 22.3 over the course of his career, which got him to be the third-leading scorer in New York history.
Arguably Dominick’s most impressive feat is his dominance over the Syosset Vet League. He played in two seasons in the vet league, 19 total games, and had a 17-2 record with two championships. He averaged 28.3 points in the vet league, and the last game he played in UH was a vet league championship where he scored 41 points and secured his tenth title. That’s quite the mic drop.
My verdict: Mastro, Harris and Frey are undeniable picks. I was expecting Leo to go with all Syosset/Garden City players, but I love the Ogunleye pick. What he’s done at the national level makes him a must-have on this team. That leaves one spot, which Leo said was between Dominick, Ken Koerner, Craig Rallo and David Mascia. Rallo and Koerner have the inverse issue: Rallo has the titles (13) but doesn’t have impressive enough numbers, while Koerner has been a great player throughout his career (second-leading scorer in UH New York history), but only has two championships to his name.
That really leaves it between Mascia and Dominick. That’s pretty much a toss up, as Mascia has two more titles, but Dominick has better numbers. I’ll trust Leo’s judgement on this one.
I do think things would’ve been interesting if Donte Howell would’ve been at 100 games before this team got revealed. He’s played in 94 as I type this, and he’d have to be considered. He certainly doesn’t have the resume of any of the players selected, but if you go based off picking great players, it’d be hard to leave him off, as he has numbers similar to Ogunleye. Luckily for Leo, he didn’t have to consider it.