RKA beats odds to reach finals

Back in the fall, when basketball teams throughout the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) were gearing up for the 2015-16 season, nobody could have predicted what was to happen at the David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy (M.S/H.S. 141, RKA).

A team that won just two games a season ago and one that hadn’t tasted the postseason in seven years was expected to be an innocent bystander this year in the PSAL. Even Tigers head coach Jason Zulauf wasn’t sure he would be returning to the RKA sidelines this season as he looked to spend more time with his wife and young family.

In the end, Zulauf decided to give it one more year and somehow, as the final week of the season commenced, there was RKA needing just one win in its final two games to clinch the most unlikely of playoff spots. From two-win team to playoff bound? A Cinderella story if ever there was one. The basketball version of “Rudy.”

The drama only increased when RKA lost its first game last week at Morris High School, setting up a win-or-go-home game battle against Walton on Feb. 5 in Riverdale in the most significant game at RKA in years.

Spoiler alert — it hasn’t struck midnight for these Cinderella Tigers just yet.

Senior Steven Calvo scored a game-high 26 points and sophomore guard William Feldman poured in 25 more as RKA limited Walton to just 15 second-half points as the Tigers wrapped up that long-awaited playoff spot with a convincing 68-40 victory in front of a frenzied crowd at RKA. The Tigers will now play an opponent to be determined in the first round of the PSAL playoffs beginning the week of Feb. 22.

“It’s amazing. Just to be with these guys and celebrating this, I never thought this could happen,” Feldman said. “To begin the season, I didn’t think we were going to make the playoffs. Nobody did. To make it happen is amazing. I can’t believe it.”