PRINCETON: PHS, South boys advance in MCT hoops

Area trio of girls teams ousted in quarterfinals

By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
   Getting back to basics worked out quite well for the Princeton High boys basketball team.
   The Little Tigers used their up-tempo style and a strong defensive effort to pull away from Hamilton and earn a 65-36 win in the Mercer County Tournament semifinals on Friday.
   Meanwhile, West Windsor-Plainsboro South scored just enough and held on to defeat Hightstown, 44-41, in its quarterfinal game. Both teams advanced to the MCT semifinals, which will be held on Wednesday at Mercer County Community College.
   Princeton, the No. 2 seed, will take on third-seeded Pennington at 4:30 p.m. in one semifinal. WW-P South, the No. 1 seed, will face fifth-seeded Notre Dame in a 7:30 p.m. start. The championship game is slated for 7:30 p.m. on Friday.
   In other MCT action, the WW-P North boys dropped a consolation round game to Hopewell Valley, 70-65, in overtime. The Knights were led by Garvin Brown with 18 points.
   In the girls MCT, WW-P South, Stuart Country Day and Princeton all dropped quarterfinal round games on Friday. The Pirates fell to third-seeded Hopewell Valley, 41-26. Liz Huttner scored 11 points to lead the Pirates. Stuart, the No. 9 seed, dropped a 63-42 decision at top-seeded Hamilton. Jasmine Smarr scored 15 points and Amber Bowman added 14 for the Tartans, who were eliminated from the state Prep B tournament with a 69-44 loss at Rutgers Prep on Sunday. And Princeton, which had upset fifth-seeded Steinert in the opening round, dropped a 57-44 decision to fourth-seeded Allentown. Julia Maltby had 16 points to lead the Little Tigers. In a consolation game, WW-P North dropped a 36-26 decision to Notre Dame.
   For Princeton and WW-P South, the MCT semis leave each just a step away from playing for a county title.
   ”It is an honor to get to the semifinals and see that our hard work has paid off,” said Princeton senior DeQuan Holman, who had 22 points in the win over Hamilton. “We have put a lot of work into this season and to see it pay off like it has for us is great. We won our division and now we’re in the MCT semifinals. It has really all come together for us.
   ”It seems like we are starting to peak and understand what each of us will bring each game. Guys have stepped up with their scoring and that is big because we need that.”
   In addition to the 22 points from Holman, Skye Ettin had 11 points and Brian Dunlap added eight. Four other players scored at least four points in the win.
   ”We’ve started to play better defense,” Holman said of the team’s recent success, which has seen it win three straight to improve to 16-5. “We wanted to get back to our tenacious defense that we were playing at the beginning of the season. We wanted to get back to our style of basketball.
   ”We know we need to have a team effort. No one person is going to lift us over the top. We just need a little here and there from everyone. We need a good team effort.”
   Princeton led just 26-20 at the half, but the defense picked up the pace in the second half and a 23-7 advantage in the third quarter blew the game open.
   ”We didn’t really execute our zone offense that well in the first half,” Princeton coach Jason Carter said. “But then we settled down and ran it the way we were supposed to run it and we played much better in the second half.”
   And in the process, the Little Tigers got contributions from players all the way down the line.
   ”That’s been our style,” Carter said. “We really need everyone to step up and contribute. We have been working on establishing roles for everyone and building our depth so we don’t have to rely on just one or two guys to make plays. We don’t want to have to rely on DeQuan, Brian and Skye to make the plays in every tough situation. We’re looking for some of the other guys to step up and contribute. I think we had that against Hamilton.”
   WW-P South had lost just one game to a Colonial Valley Conference foe this season, and on Friday they were able to gain a measure of revenge by topping Hightstown in the rematch.
   ”I think that our guys really wanted to make up for the loss and I think they came out a little tight in the beginning of the game,” said South coach Bob Schurtz, whose team improved to 20-2 with the win. “We made some mistakes early in the game. But I just told them to relax and go play.”
   The Pirates led 20-18 at halftime and led by eight with less than one minute to play before the Rams hit a couple of late shots to cut the lead to the final margin of 44-41. Dan Balevski led the Pirates with 12 points and Austin Witter added 11.