Ken Weingartner

By: centraljersey.com
HAMILTON – For all that went wrong, it almost ended all right.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro North boys basketball team lost the Flight One championship game at the Eastern States Christmas Invitational Tournament by one point to Hamilton West last week despite shooting 1-for-8 from the floor and committing seven turnovers during the game’s final eight-and-a-half minutes.
"We didn’t play our game," Knights coach Dale Florio said after the 47-46 setback at Trenton Catholic Academy. "They played pretty good defense; I give their defense credit. But despite the number of mistakes we made we were still in the game.
"We’ve got a good team. Even on a mediocre night we can stay in the game. We just didn’t get the big play down the stretch that we needed."
Mike Klotz led all scorers with 24 points, but Hamilton’s focus was on shutting down WW-P North’s Eli Can and Ethan Harel. Can, who drilled six 3-pointers in the Knights’ first-round win over Pennsbury, was limited to two points while Harel, coming off a 20-point performance, scored six.
Klotz received the Paulie DelGiudice Jr. Award as the Knights’ Player of the Game.
There were 19 lead changes and 11 ties in the game. North held the game’s biggest advantage of four points on two occasions in the third quarter, the final time at 41-37 with a minute to play in the period.
Prior to the end of the quarter, Hamilton’s Mike Bryant put back a missed shot and was fouled. He made the free throw to pull the Hornets within 41-40 going into the fourth period.
"One of the problems we have right now is we’re giving teams second chances at the basket," Florio said. "We’ve got to shut that down and we’ll have an easier time. They got a lot of second chances. One series in the first half, they got five shots at the basket. You can’t do that and expect to win.
"Yet we only lost by one point. But you could see throughout the game that tonight wasn’t our night and the second chances Hamilton got really hurt us."
North had a chance to pull out the win at the end, but a layup at the buzzer was off the mark. The shot came after the Knights hit one of two free throws to get within a point with 11.9 seconds to play and Hamilton missed the front end of a 1-and-1.
"I told the kids to be positive," Florio said. "On a night we were mediocre we were right there with a chance to win the game. We’ve got a long way to go and the guys should be positive. They want to have a good season and if we avoid too many mediocre nights we’ll do fine."