“Do It All” Paul Mulcahy was sensational his sophomore year. While many expected Gil St. Bernards to drop off the map due to the losses of 2016 NJ Freshmen of the year Jake Betlow to Montverde (and now St. Benedict's Prep,) and Adam Mitola to George Washington, Gil took steps forward in 2017. One of the major reasons Gil was able to take such large steps forward despite the loss of so many key pieces was due to the stellar play of Mulcahy.
📸 Brandon Dorf
Paul may not be the biggest, fastest or strongest, but he has one of the best foundations in the NJ. Paul has an extremely high basketball IQ and keeps teams honest by using all players and sections of the floor each game.
It's only right that we paid homage by selecting Mulcahy as a diarist for us this year. Check back throughout the season as Paul gives us an insider look at the life of a star student athlete playing basketball on the highest level in New Jersey.
Hello everyone! My name is Paul Mulcahy and I am a guard for Gil St. Bernards. I will be checking in with you guys twice a month to share my journey throughout my junior season!
This summer I played 17U for the Tim Thomas Playaz. We had a bunch of good players. Justin Minaya who is at South Carolina. Jalen Carey, Tavon Jones, etc. I caught some bad luck in the first session of the EYBL and hurt my tailbone pretty badly. I played through it but it kept bothering me a bit. We qualified and went to California. We played the New York Rens in a “do or die” type of game. It was a great win for us. We also qualified for Peach Jam and played in Vegas.
I also got invited to the Nike Top 100 camp in St. Louis. At the end of the first game I fell and hurt my hip pretty bad. I heard that I was playing like one of the top five guys there so that really ruined everything. It was an up and down spring/summer but I learned a lot.
With that being said, I got a decent amount of offers this summer. My most recent one was from Rhode Island from coach Hurley. I also got an offer from Boston College. Their head coach just came to my scrimmage recently. They also beat Duke, so that was pretty cool. Right now I have offers from Virginia Tech, SMU, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Temple and St. Joes.
Our first couple practices were great. We work on our conditioning with skill development and scrimmaging. Our mindset this year is simple: One game at a time. I feel like we have the talent to beat anyone if we take things one day at a time. Right now we focusing on playing hard and for each other. That’s the way at Gil St. Bernards. We are really excited about the realignment of the state brackets. I feel like there’s no way people can hide anymore, eventually teams will have to play us.
I’m very pleased with the progression from some of my teammates. I have been playing ball with Alex for five years now. I am very happy for him as he will be going to John Hopkins and playing basketball there. He’s a great teammate. He always plays hard. He loves to defend and will mix it up and get rebounds. He also worked a lot on his shot.
Will Soucie is a sophomore and will play a much bigger role on the team this year. He can shoot now and is really growing into his body. He’s pretty versatile as he can play inside as well if we need him to. Battle is a good player as well. He does a lot of things so well that people overlook. He can pass the ball well and is working hard to take his game to another level everyday. Naturally gifted player, can really shoot the ball.
So we had four scrimmages. Our first one was against Bergen Catholic. They have a well coached team and are disciplined. They have a lot of length as well. We came out kinda slow but we still won. Next one was Don Bosco. They have a nice team as well. We came out very strong in that one as well. We also played Mater Dei. I love Kenny and the way he plays. They played four guards so they were very interchangeable. The last one was against Linden. It was a great scrimmage for us. They had an amazing turnout for a pre-season game. They didn’t have a lot of size but they played strong defense and had good guard play.
Early on we have some pretty cool games to start the year. Our second game is against Shawnee. They are pretty good public school team in Group 4. We have a pretty good christmas tournament at our school as well. We play Roselle Catholic the second day. We also play Camden in the New Years tournament at Montclair State.
Away from the sport, I’m actually a big fan of the show “Criminal Minds.” I’m really big into behavioral analysis. I like studying and reading people. Being able to read people and know why people do the things they do is pretty cool to me.
'Til next time,
Paul