Soaring with Falcons

Behind Abdul-Ali, Bentley hard to beat

By Michael Vega, Boston Globe



WALTHAM - With each victory in Bentley's 28-0 season, the pressure to remain perfect has increased.

"With each win," said Yusuf Abdul-Ali, "the games become harder because teams are going to bring it even harder."

But the unflappable, 5-foot-11-inch senior from Springfield fully embraces the pressure every time the Falcons take the court. Abdul-Ali knows his job as a point guard is to handle the adversity and to guide Bentley, the nation's No. 1 team in Division 2, in its quest for a Northeast-10 Conference championship and a national championship.

Although the burden to keep the perfect record has been palpable, "I don't really think about it," Abdul-Ali said.

Pausing, he added with a chuckle, "And if I do think about it, I just knock on wood."

There it is. Bentley's secret has been revealed. It's all superstition. Just knock on wood. How else do you explain the Falcons' dominance in the NE-10 over the last two seasons?

Some would suggest Abdul-Ali's stable yet quiet leadership has been largely responsible for Bentley compiling a 60-1 record over that span. This after Abdul-Ali played his first two seasons behind all-conference guards Tim Forbes and Sean Cooke, who rank third and sixth, respectively, among the school's career scoring leaders.

"He's showed a tremendous amount of resiliency," coach Jay Lawson said. "I'm sure he went through some frustration. Even his junior year, he had to win the position, but he's really blossomed into a nice player for us at lead guard."

While he ranks fourth in scoring (11.8 points per game) and fifth in rebounding (3.8) on the team, Abdul-Ali's teammates say he ranks as Bentley's undisputed leader.

"Where would we be without him?" said fifth-year senior Nate Fritsch. "That's tough to say. We've accomplished so much with him. He's so talented. I just can't even imagine what it would be like without him."

Without Abdul-Ali in Monday night's 67-64 overtime triumph against Le Moyne in the quarterfinals of the NE-10 playoffs, the Falcons would have likely trudged off their home court reeling from their first loss since a 64-51 setback to Winona State, the undefeated defending champion, in last year's Elite Eight.

But Abdul-Ali's career-high 23 points on 8-for-12 shooting (4 of 6 from the 3-point arc) enabled the Falcons to advance and host tonight's semifinal against Stonehill, which Bentley twice thrashed during the regular season (79-45 and 65-43).

"There's some days when you think about it, when you go back to the room and you think about all the wins," Abdul-Ali said. "But once we get in the locker room or on the court, we don't think about it. We don't play like we're the No. 1 team [in the nation]. We play like we're the underdogs.

"We know that, just like [Monday] night, any given team can beat us. [Le Moyne] was like the eighth-seeded team in the NE-10, so we just try to come out with that underdog mentality and go out and play as hard as we can."

Home schooled by his mother, Alooah Abdul-Qaadir, through sixth grade, Abdul-Ali absorbed several vital lessons.

"My mom didn't let me get away with much," Abdul-Ali said, laughing. "If I didn't do my work, I couldn't go to the gym and play ball. I got up in the morning just like a regular student. I think it was a good experience, just being at home and learning from your mother and learning a lot more than just math and English. She taught us how to behave and how to act in public. Life skills, basically.

"I learned a lot of stuff, just to respect people, to respect my elders, to respect my peers. Give respect if they give you respect. She drove that into me."

Abdul-Ali applied those lessons when he was a senior point guard for New Leadership Charter School, which advanced to the 2004 Division 3 state final at the FleetCenter in just its second year of varsity play. It marked the first time in state tourney history a charter school had reached a final, where Abdul-Ali's Wildcats lost to Rockland, 63-60.

New Leadership's journey was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill that still resonates for Abdul-Ali, who now finds himself on another journey toward a possible championship.

"Everybody wants to win a championship," he said. "I think not winning it in high school gives me motivation now to come out here and play my hardest and give it everything I can to come out and win this NE-10 championship. Hopefully, we can keep on winning and win the national championship."

Abdul-Ali says his former New Leadership teammates still keep in touch. They'll text message him before each game. "We don't really talk as much, but we keep in touch," he said.

There is one former teammate Abdul-Ali wishes he could still reach out and touch: Richard Cunningham.

"He passed away two summers ago," said Abdul-Ali, still unsure of how his friend died.

Cunningham, 19, was found in his car on the side of a road in Hampton County, S.C., July 14, 2006.

"The case has never been figured out, so it's still like an open case. It hit me real hard. He was a close friend. We drove to school together every morning. I talked to him all the time and worked out with him at the YMCA in Springfield all the time. So when I heard the news, it was devastating."

Cunningham's death hit Yusuf harder than the death of his own father, Jamal Abdul-Ali, who died of pneumonia at 43.

His mother, Alooah, said, "He lost his father when he was 4, so he was probably too young to know what was going on because he was just a baby at the time."

But losing Cunningham? "That was traumatic because those two were close," she said. "He kept it more internal, but from what I saw I know it hurt him. I know he didn't talk a lot to me, and I don't know if he talked a lot to his friends, but he did go to the funeral and rode down there [to South Carolina] with some of his other classmates, so being with them kind of helped him.

"He just seems to kind of work things out himself a lot."

So why would anyone expect a half-court trap or a full-court press to rattle him?

Given all Abdul-Ali has been through to even earn the right to play at Bentley - earning a full scholarship after impressing Lawson in a pickup game against the team - those matters of the hardcourt would seem trivial.

"I just think he's unflappable on the court," Lawson said, pointing to Abdul-Ali's assists (110) to turnovers (88) this season. "We've always wanted him to talk more on the court. But he's not that prototypical, flashy point guard who's always talking. He's a quiet leader. Bottom line, he's a great friend to have on the court because he knows how to treat players and how to give them respect and he gets that respect in return for the player and the person he is."