BY WAYNE WITKOWSKI
Staff Writer
Brick’s Bobby Henning has continued his strong play at The College of New Jersey, where as the point guard for the men’s basketball team, he has led his team to a fast start this winter. If statistics are an indicator, Bobby Henning of Brick is the most consistent men’s basketball player in the New Jersey Athletic Conference.
The senior at The College of New Jersey has led the conference the past two seasons in the most telltale statistic for point guards — assist-to-turnover ratio. He has 47 assists to 26 turnovers for the 11-5 Lions going into last weekend, giving him a 1.5 differential edge in assists per game.
“I had pretty high expectations for this year for myself and my team. It’s going as expected,” said Henning. “The coach made clear for me my role. Basically, he wants me to be an extension of him on the floor.”
It’s essentially the same role he had in high school when he excelled at East Brunswick where his dad, Bo, has been head coach.
“The strength of my game is that I’ve been around basketball for so long so I’m more knowledgeable,” said Henning. “I pick up things faster.”
“He comes from a great family where he is a coach’s son, so he does an excellent job orchestrating things,” said coach John Castaldo. “And he does all the little things that don’t show up on the stat sheets. Along with steals, he forces loose balls, takes charges. He’s pretty consistent understanding his role.”
And that means leading the conference in assists-to-turnovers for the second straight year after starting the season off briefly at the No. 2 spot in that statistic. Going into the weekend, he is averaging 2.6 points and 1.4 rebounds and has made 10 of 13 free throws.
Last season, he had a conference high 1.65 edge in assists-to-turnovers per game with 102 assists — 3.78 per game that was sixth best in the conference when TCNJ closed an 18-9 season with an opening-round loss to Rowan in the conference playoffs.
“I’m more on a comfort level, more familiar with the system and the guys I’m playing around because we have the exact same team as last year, along with two freshmen,” said Henning.
Henning realizes he is the last option on many offensive sets with a 20-point scorer in Derrick Grant, who leads the conference, a tough inside force in Scott Findlay, who has led the conference in rebounding and arguably the most dangerous three-point shooter in the conference in Kyle Burke.
“It makes my job a whole lot easier,” said Henning. “We know we have the talent and with my experience and the way I’m playing in my role, the guys might be looking up to me.”
But things have not been going as smoothly of late. TCNJ resumed after the holiday break with a victory over Amherst, which was ranked No. 4 in the nation at the time, to boost the Lions into the No. 12 spot. They followed it with a victory over William Paterson to go 11-1 (marred only by a 69-68 loss to Albright in late November).
Then, they went on a four-game tailspin against Ramapo, Neumann, Montclair State and Rutgers-Newark, 68-64, on Saturday to fall out of first place in the NJAC with a 5-3 record and drop out of the rankings.
“Early on, we were pretty solid as a team and balls were bouncing our way. We’re struggling lately on the defensive end,” said Henning. “It’s been a lot of things recently. We were shooting the basketball well as a team but in the last three games we’re not shooting as great.
“Maybe we have tired legs and maybe we’re just not confident enough against the pressure,” said Henning.
“We just need to shoot the ball a little more consistently and to play at a high level,” said Castaldo.
Henning is confident his team can recover.
“I feel we will bounce back,” said Henning, who feels he will do his part to make that happen as the team heads into the second half of its conference schedule.