By: Sean Moylan
A bad second quarter led to the Northern Burlington County Regional High School boys’ varsity basketball team’s demise in a 53-45 loss at Rancocas Valley on Tuesday night.
"We played well enough to win the game tonight (Tuesday)," said NBC Coach Herman Johnson, pointing to all the good things his team did to build up a 17-11 lead after one quarter.
In the second quarter, rather than work the ball around as was originally planned, NBC started settling for jump shots, according to Johnson.
"The second quarterthat was our worst quarter (RV outscored NBC 14-2 in that quarter) in four years at Northern," remarked Johnson.
"I’m happy with the kids’ effort, but at the same time my kids don’t listen to their coaches as much as they should."
Because of a lack of size on the front court, Johnson believes his club needs to stay within the parameters of his system even more. Even so, he was extremely pleased with Darius Newton’s game, especially in the second half where he scored 14 of his team-high 20 points. Jerry Howell (seven points) and Keith Jones (six points) also had good game for NBC in defeat. However, Rancocas Valley, like most of NBC’s opponents on the schedule, is a very good team.
"We’ve almost got to play a perfect game of basketball to win," Johnson added. Johnson has coached for great programs for 15 years. He knows what he’s doing.
Irving Fryar (five points), Danny Zimplemann (five points) and Gary Soto (two points) also scored in a losing cause. In the first quarter NBC worked the ball inside and it was able to get RV’s star Calvin Wright in foul trouble. Johnson would like to see more play like that.
This past Saturday, Shawnee topped NBC, 55-41, at Northern Burlington.
"We played a very good game against them," said Johnson.
Defensively, NBC has been holding teams down. However, because of its size, it’s hard for Northern Burlington to mount comeback victories.
Nevertheless, Johnson was very happy with the play of Howell (10 points), Jones (10 points) and Newton (nine points) in the contest.
NBC (2-5) is scheduled to host Hamilton West today (Thursday). Then, on Tuesday, NBC is scheduled at Burlington Township.

