Edwin Serpas is used to walking the halls of Great Neck South High School and getting congratulated when the boys basketball team he plays on does well.
The “Way to go!” and “Great job!” become routine over the years for Serpas, a senior guard.
But this year? Things have gone to another level.
“I’ve got middle school kids (at our games and outside school) coming up to me and being all excited and giving high-fives!” Serpas said this week, a bewildered expression on his face. “They’re like ‘Great game, Edwin’ and I don’t even know any of these kids!
“It’s been crazy.”
That craziness has come for a very good reason: The Rebels boys team just does not lose. Through 19 games in 2024-25, Great Neck South has gone undefeated, and are the last remaining perfect team on Long Island.
Led by Serpas and fellow seniors, twin brothers Jesse and John Roggendorf, the Rebels have won blowouts, extremely close games, and anything in between. Starting Feb. 19 in the county playoffs, they’ll try to do something that hasn’t been done in forever.
How long has it been since Great Neck South won a county crown in boys hoops? Richard Nixon hadn’t been elected President yet, the Beatles were still together, and the New York Mets were five years old.
It was 1967, long before any of the current players’ parents were even born.
“We don’t talk about being undefeated or what could happen in playoffs at all, not once,” said head coach Mike Holleran. “These kids have been great about just staying focused on what’s going on today or our next game.”
Great Neck South knew this year could be special. Last season, they went 17-3 and earned the No. 1 seed in the AA playoffs before a shock loss to Sewanhaka in the first round.
But this season has been even better than they could’ve hoped. Jesse Roggendorf, as he’s done throughout his career, leads the Rebels in scoring with a 24.6 average, including a 46-point game against Valley Stream Central in January. And twin brother John, a 6-foot-5 forward, has continued to improve, averaging a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds per game while hitting 40 percent from 3-point land.
But it’s the rest of the starters that have really pushed Great Neck South to a new level. Serpas, called a “glue guy” by his teammates, has become much steadier, averaging seven points and five boards a game. In comparison, junior Conrad Xu pours in 8.4 points per game and hit maybe the biggest shot of the season so far, a 3-pointer in the final seconds against defending AAA county champ Baldwin in January that sent the game into overtime.
“The trust in each other has been growing for years and growing so much this year,” Xu said. “We know we can trust each other to hit shots and to be in the spots on defense where we’re supposed to be.”
That defense has been punishing, as Great Neck South allows just 46.4 points per game. A defense led by Xu and junior Adrian Wei has been able to get stops when needed, and while Jesse Roggendorf has been his usual amazing self this season (“he’s driving to the hole much more and dunking on everybody,” Serpas said), the offense has been well spread out.
“We kind of let the game come to us and play whatever style we need to to win that night,” said Holleran, the longtime Great Neck North coach who is in his second year leading South, having replaced the legendary Steve Liebertz in 2023. “And Jesse and John and the seniors have taken the lead; they’ve been around so long that they know everything that’s going on out there.”
As good as the season has gone, Great Neck South knows it just takes one bad night in the playoffs to end it all; it learned that last year in the Sewanhaka loss.
So no cockiness or complacency is setting in, no matter how many middle-schoolers know their names.
“Anyone can beat us, and we can beat anybody, that’s how we look at it,” John Roggendorf said. “Everyone remembers the feeling from the playoffs last year; that stuck with us the whole offseason. No one wants to go through that again.”
