Cougar boys’ basketball wins two straight
By: Bob Nuse
For Chris Rogers, frustration doesn’t get any worse than his junior season with the Montgomery High boys’ basketball team.
A starter on opening night, Rogers damaged ligaments in his thumb in the second quarter of his first game. The injury forced him to miss the entire season, although he had hopes of making it back earlier.
"I knew I could have been a help to the team," said the 6-foot-5 Rogers, now a senior and a starter for the Cougars. "Even if I wasn’t scoring, I could have gotten some rebounds or helped on defense. It was tough not playing. I just came down on my thumb wrong in that first game at Voorhees and tore a ligament. I had to have surgery.
"I thought I might make it back at the end of the season, but I was just a couple of days short of being cleared before our New Brunswick game in the states. I had tried to keep up my conditioning so that if I was cleared I could play, but it didn’t happen."
Rogers is making up for the lost time now, starting at center for the Cougars. A co-captain, the senior isn’t showing many signs of rust. In fact, his play in the last two games helped the Cougars snap a five-game losing streak, posting wins over Watchung Hills on Friday and Perth Amboy on Saturday to improve to 6-8 on the season.
"We’ve stayed pretty positive the whole time," said Rogers, who scored 12 points in a 64-36 in over Perth Amboy on Saturday. "We’re starting to put it together as a team. Everyone is getting the ball and we’re getting open shots. We feel like we’ve started to click. We’re coming together as a team.
"The win over Watchung Hills (58-46 on Friday) really put us where we want to be and we fed off that right into Saturday."
Rogers had 13 points and 13 rebounds in the win over Watchung Hills. The Cougars also received 20 points from senior guard Chris Fischer in that win. Fischer came back to score 15 in the win over Perth Amboy on Saturday.
"The kids have really stepped up, especially the senior captains, Chris Rogers, Chris Fischer and Dupree Wade," said Montgomery coach Kris Grundy, whose team will host Franklin tonight. "They have played real well. And the younger players have all helped out and done well. Kevin Tarca, Connor Paladino, Walter Rockhill, Nick Cafiero, they have all been contributing and giving us solid minutes.
"Chris and Chris both played real well against Watchung. Chris Rogers had 13 points and 13 rebounds. Chris Fischer had 20 points. They have both really stepped up."
Montgomery got off to a good start to the season, winning four of its first seven games. But then a rough stretch of games against some of the better teams in the Skyland Conference sent the Cougars into a losing streak.
"There are no down games in the conference we play in," Grundy said. "So we knew after the holiday tournament and then a tough loss to Warren Hills, that there were not going to be any easy games. It’s just one tough game after another. We struggled against Franklin. We played with Bridgewater for three quarters. Against Hillsborough we were up six with two minutes left and it slipped away from us.
"But you could tell we were starting to play better and coming around. We played Immaculata, the No. 1 team in the area, and we were tied with four minutes left. They just executed better than we did down the stretch."
But the narrow loss to the Spartans helped Montgomery’s confidence, which showed with the last two wins. For Rogers, being able to help the team this year is making up for the disappointment of a year ago.
"I was real excited for last year because I felt like we had something good going," he said. "Then I busted my thumb in the second quarter of the first game. So this year I really wanted to do well. We still have a chance to do some good things. We have the (Somerset) county tournament coming up soon. We’re not trying to set any goals right now. We just want to play the best we can and see what happens."
And playing the best they can usually means a good defensive effort from the Cougars. Even with a record below .500, they have allowed 50 or more points in just five of their 14 games. And they held a powerful Immaculata team to just 38 points.
"We can play defense against anybody," Grundy said. "The kids have worked real hard on that. I told them before the season that defense was going to be how we win games. The offense would eventually come around. The kids have stuck with it and against Watchung Hills, we played a great game. Our shots were falling and our defense was very good. That carried over into Saturday and we played well against Perth Amboy and got another win.
"I’m proud of the kids and my coaching staff. They have all continued to work hard and do whatever I ask them to do. We were 4-8 and there could have been some finger pointing and wondering what was going on. But it never got to that point. Everyone kept working and we got two nice wins and now we’re 6-8. Everybody stayed upbeat. I really believe that we can be a dangerous team the rest of the way."