You probably knew about Jeff Ruland and Iona in the tourney, but did you know Sachem had others play on college basketball’s grandest stage?
If there was ever a golden age of basketball in Sachem you may have to point to the late 1970s. And if this golden age is measured based on alumni performing at the highest level of college basketball, then you’d have a convincing argument.
Imagine a world where not one but two Sachem alumni were in the NCAA basketball tournament during the same season. That happened in 1979 when Jeff Ruland was playing at Iona and Mark Graebe was at Pepperdine. Long before the days of bracket pools and 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage of March Madness, these two long and lanky forwards from Sachem were dominating on the Division I level.
Ruland, recruited by the legendary Jim Valvano, was a star who carried the Gaels with the likes of other Long Island talent like North Babylon’s Kevin Hamilton and Babylon’s Glen Vickers.
The Gaels lost to the University of Pennsylvania, 73-69, in the first round, but were back again one season later to capture their school’s first NCAA Tournament victory, an 84-78 win over Holy Cross. Iona would lose to Georgetown, 74-71, in the second round.
Ruland went on to play in the NBA from 1981-1993 with the Washington Bullets, Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons. He was an original inductee of the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003 and inducted to the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.
Ruland had success again reaching the tournament as the head coach at his alma mater in 2000, 2001, and 2006, all first round loses.
Graebe, playing across the country a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean for the appropriately named Waves, played two seasons at Pepperdine. He played in two NCAA Tournament games in 1979, a 92-88 overtime win against Utah in the first round, and then a 76-71 loss to a John Wooden coached UCLA squad.
Graebe, featured in the photo at the top of this story, saw time in 24 games that season averaging 7.3 points and 1.7 rebounds per game. A three-sport athlete at Sachem who graduated in 1975, Graebe was inducted to the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016.
Two seasons later, Sachem alum Joe Buonincontri, a 6-foot-7 forward, helped James Madison to the NCAA tournament where they played in the dance for two straight seasons. In 1980-81, James Madison beat Georgetown, 61-55, in the first round and then lost to Notre Dame, 54-45, in the second. A year later Buonincontri picked up another first round victory, this time against Ohio State and then lost to eventual champion North Carolina, 52-50. The Tar Heels had some guy named Michael Jordan on the floor.
On the women’s side, Nicole Kaczmarski played in just 29 games at UCLA, but one was an NCAA Tournament first round game during her freshman season in 1999-00. Kaz scored 13 points in a 79-72 loss to George Washington. Shortly after the season ended, she transferred to Georgia and then eventually to Stony Brook, but did not play at either school.
One of the top prep basketball players in New York history, she was drafted by the New York Liberty of the WNBA and later inducted to the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016.
At the same time Kaz was in the Dance, Jeremiah Schlie was closing out a strong career at the University of Miami. At the time, he had been involved with the school’s most successful run, which included four NCAA Tournament berths, a Big East regular season title in 1999-00 and a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2000.
For the Flaming Arrows he averaged 23 points and 10 rebounds per game en route to breaking Ruland’s career scoring record and helping Sachem its only Suffolk County championship in 1996.
Perhaps Sachem’s best March Madness story, however, was the unlikely and unexpected sabbatical that Mike Atkinson took from his teaching and coaching job at Sachem North. He spent the 1992 season as a volunteer assistant at the University of Kentucky with head coach and Long Island native, Rick Pitino.
If you recall, that is the same season when Duke’s Christian Laettner hit a 17-foot jumper to beat the Wildcats, 104-103, in overtime of the East Region championship.
The following season Atkinson would get the Sachem varsity girls basketball head coaching position and lead the Flaming Arrows to a dominant stretch that included a 1995 New York State title, six appearances in Suffolk County championship games and a 159-41 overall record in nine seasons. He was later the varsity boys basketball coach at Sachem North.
Finally, not a Sachem alum, but a longtime community resident, Chuck Everson won a National Championship with Villanova in 1985. Everson played high school ball at Brentwood.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro / Feature Photo Courtesy Pepperdine Athletics