Published: July 03, 2008 10:11 pm         

BASKETBALL: NU camp concludes

Color commentary was Charron Fisher’s contribution to the final contest of this week’s basketball camp at Niagara University.

“Pa-tri-ots! Pa-tri-ots!” Fisher yelled in the direction of former teammate Tyrone Lewis, whose squad had gone undefeated all week in the NBA division, before losing the championship game.

Powerful point guard C.J. Cox of Niagara Falls led the Jazz to victory, giving young Joe Mihalich, son of the Purple Eagles head coach, his first camp championship in five years of trying.

“The monkey is off my back,” said Mihalich, set to begin his senior year at Nazareth College after a summer of working basketball camps nearly every week.

While Mihalich, who has incorporated many of his father’s mannerisms into his bench decorum, out-foxed Lewis, who prefers the laid-back coaching style of Phil Jackson, at the Gallagher Center, Erika Harris led her Phoenix Mercury squad to the WNBA championship, and former men’s team manager Danny O’Brien won an NCAA title at the first camp he ever worked.

Afterward, the elder Mihalich called every one of the more than 100 campers champions.

“There have been basketball camps at Niagara University since the 1960s,” he said, “and this was one of our best weeks ever.”