By: Sean Moylan
FRANKLIN With a defender draped all over him and Monmouth holding a 50-48 lead with roughly 25 seconds to go in the contest, Mike Williston jumped as high as his 5′ 11′ frame would take him to grab a pass out of the air in the far left corner of the court.
When Williston came down, the Hightstown Rams boys’ varsity basketball team’s fate would be all but sealed.
It appeared Williston was fouled. Instead, he was called for a travel and moments later Monmouth Regional went on to defeat Hightstown, 52-48, and win the Central Jersey Group III championship at the new Franklin Township High School on Tuesday night.
Hightstown outscored Monmouth 22-12 in the third quarter to take a 10-point lead (38-28) lead into the final eight minutes of play. However, excluding that third quarter, the Rams never exhibited the same crispness they had shown in the semifinal win over a Neptune team with a better defense than Monmouth’s.
"I thought the difference in the game was we had 20 turnovers, which is very uncharacteristic of us. We work on these presses all the time. We went 1-3-1 like we were supposed to. We just turned the ball over. That’s the worst game we played all season. I don’t know if it was the crowd, the big atmosphere, I don’t know what it was. But it wasn’t one of our better games," said Hightstown head coach Don Hess, who was hoping to celebrate his 58th birthday with the Rams’ first state tournament championship ever.
Nevertheless, the Rams led the whole game until center Joseph Willman made a big three-pointer with 1:24 remaining to give the Falcons a 48-46 lead. But Hightstown’s Terrill Choice (8 points) cut to the basket and drew a foul. His subsequent free throws with 1:09 left on the clock were picture perfect and put Hightstown back in business.
With 29.9 seconds left, Anthony Gibson made a pair of foul shots to give the Falcons a 50-48 edge. Then came the call that went against Williston, who scored 8 points and had 7 assists.
While Hightstown very well may have not gone on to win, the call changed the momentum of the contest. Nonetheless, the Rams would not go quietly.
Cory Smith (6 points) made a big half-court steal but he was inadvertently (it was totally accidental) clobbered by a referee on the play so his subsequent pass to a teammate cutting to the hoop was intercepted.
The next four or five seconds were like a circus act as the Rams tried to foul everyone with a heartbeat to stop the clock. Finally with 3.3 ticks left on the clock, a foul was called and Gibson, the Falcons’ "Mr. Clutch," sank a pair of foul shots.
Williston raced up the right sideline and threw up a half-court prayer of a shot that rimmed out at the buzzer. He drew contact on the shot, but with Hightstown, down by 4, no foul call was made and it was over.
For most of the way, the officials called a "let ’em play," physical game which, for whatever reason, did not benefit the Rams.
Bobby Dougherty, whose two 3’s were the only outside shots the Rams made all game, was hit hard in the eye and had to miss the final five minutes of the contest. Moreover, when Hess took Williston out early in the fourth quarter because of foul trouble, the Rams’ ball control and movement was not the same and the Falcons answered with a steal and 4 points.
"He (Williston) had four fouls and I just wanted to give him one minute of rest so he wouldn’t foul out," said Hess, who had Williston on Brandon Cohen, the Falcons’ best offensive player, much of the way. "But they came back and took the game from us."
At the start of the first quarter, Bryan Mino Worth (4 points) hit a baby jumper, Williston made two foul shots and Smith broke down the defense for a bucket to give Hightstown an early 6-0 lead. After a 9-4 first quarter, the Rams had a late turnover which allowed the Falcons to tie the game at 16-16 just before the half. It would be an omen of things to come.
"In the first half we were very tentative against that zone. We’ve been working against that zone for three decades and we stil were tentative" said Hess, who did get a few good minutes of defense from Kevin Sobkowiak off the bench. "I kept on telling the kids Attack! Attack! Attack!"
In the third quarter the Hightstown offense did attack. Senior forward Tim Lawson exploded to the hoop and he netted 10 of his 16 points in the quarter. He also grabbed 9 rebounds in the contest. Lawson and Williston crashed the boards and set each other up over and over again. Meanwhile, Dougherty, Worth and Choice added some fine plays of their own. It was Hightstown basketball at its best. Only it didn’t last.
It’s hard to play great basketball every time out. That’s why there are so many upsets in the NCAA tournament. Even so, it was a great year for Hightstown. It won the Valley Division, the Mercer County Tournament and it reached a Central Jersey Group III title game.
"I feel bad for the seniors (Lawson, Williston, Dougherty, Jason Brown and Sobkowiak). It would have been nice for those seniors to have won a Central Jersey Championship," said Hess, who proved, once again, that he is a tremendous basketball coach.
Hess’ basketball team bought into his tremendous system and impacted all of Hightstown. And he thanks the fans, the administration and the community for their support the entire season.
"We had 20 kids at every practice from December all the way to March," said a proud Hess, whose club finished the season with a 20-6 record. The perfect "team" fell 90 seconds short of a championship this past Tuesday night. "March MadNess" has a way of getting to the best of the finest of basketball squads.

