Opening last week with a pair of impressive wins, the Metuchen High School boys basketball team qualified for its fifth consecutive state tournament. The Bulldogs entered last week 7-7 on the season and needed to win two of their three scheduled games to have a shot at the Central Jersey Group II Tournament. The team nearly made a clean sweep of its three games but came up short in a 54-48 loss to Bishop Ahr on Saturday.
“It was a game of runs,” Metuchen head coach Rich Stoner said. “We took a nice lead early in both halves, but Bishop Ahr put together some strong runs and chipped away at our leads. It really came down to free throws. Bishop Ahr was in the bonus early and they made their foul shots. I thought we put together one of our best defensive efforts of the season.”
Metuchen’s Evan Carberry filled up the stat sheet in the loss finishing with nine points, seven rebounds, four assists and a pair of steals. Mike Crusco was Metuchen’s leading scorer with 13 points.
Metuchen opened the week with a 57-34 victory over South River and followed Monday’s victory with a 64-50 win over JFK.
“We didn’t play well over the weekend heading into this very important week,” Stoner said. “I told the guys that if we were going to make the state tournament, we were going to have to do this together. I thought they bounced back well and everyone did his job, and we played really well collectively. We got a lot of layups against Kennedy because everyone was involved and we moved the ball well.”
Nick Callas led the Dogs with nine points with Carberry, Vinny Sardone and Cody Preston each contributing eight. Elijah Sellers chipped in seven.
Sellers came up big in the win over Kennedy with a first-half performance that was simply unstoppable. He led the Bulldogs with 14 first-half points.
“At the half, I told Elijah that Kennedy was probably talking about him in their locker room,” Stoner said. “He was beating people off the dribble easily and I told him Kennedy would probably try to step up its defense on him. He responded well and found open guys in the second half.”
Carberry benefited from Sellers’ court awareness in the second half, scoring 12 of his 16 points after the half. Sardone gave the team a solid inside performance finishing with 11 points and eight rebounds.
“Vinny has been undersized against most of the competition this year, but he always plays hard,” Stoner said. “He stays active and he does a lot of the little things that are essential for a team to be successful.”
The Bulldogs have another tough week ahead of them with three straight road games against the likes of Highland Park, South Hunterdon and Dunellen.