FREEHOLD,
NEW JERSEY – The East Brunswick Bears defeated
the Freehold Boro Colonials 72-67 in overtime in a nonconference matchup on
Wednesday night.
The Bears,
ranked third in the Greater Middlesex Conference, are off to an impressive 6-0
start after finishing 14-11 last season. The road victory against Shore Conference
No. 2 Freehold Boro demonstrates East Brunswick’s
goal of returning to the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group IV playoffs may be within
reach.
Mike Summerer hit four big free throws.
Photo by Steve Goldberg
“I don’t
want to get ahead of ourselves. It’s such a long season. This is a great win,
but it’s only early January,” East Brunswick Head Coach Bo Henning said. “I
want us to keep getting better and better, and that’s what we talk about all
the time at practice. Hopefully we’ll keep going in the right direction. We
have a bunch of great kids, so I don’t see why we can’t do that.”
The
score was close throughout the entire game, and neither team led by more than
10 points. Trailing 60-58 with under 30 seconds remaining in regulation, shooting
guard Lance McKenzie hit a game-tying layup for Freehold Boro that sent the
game into overtime. McKenzie, despite playing with pain in his left leg, was
the leading scorer with 23 points.
East
Brunswick
jumped out to a 65-60 lead in overtime, but the Colonials answered right back.
Christian Garcia drove to the basket for an easy hoop and Sterry Codrington hit
a three-pointer that tied the game at 65 with 1:15 to play.
Mike
Summerer carried the Bears for the rest of the period. The sophomore forward gave
East Brunswick a two-point lead with 25
seconds left and hit four free throws to seal the victory. Summerer scored 8 of
his team-high 13 points in overtime.
“This
game was really big. They’re a real tough team but we’re doing really good this
year,” Summerer said. “We stopped Garcia; a real tough player, a real strong
kid who is really good at finishing. We just found a way to stop them and got
big boards at the end.”
Garcia dropped 22 for Freehold Boro
Photo by Steve Goldberg
Garcia
scored the first 9 points of the game for the Colonials and finished with a
total of 22. Even the dominant performances of Garcia and McKenzie were not
enough to carry Freehold Boro past East Brunswick.
“Christian
and Lance are just outstanding players. We were hoping we could wear them down
because I think we’re as deep as anyone around,” Henning said. “We don’t do it
with a lot of stars, but we try to do it with as many solid players as we can. As
long as we keep staying unselfish on both ends of the court, we should have a
pretty solid season.”
Freehold
Boro will travel to Ocean
Township on Friday to
take on the Spartans. Ocean
Township has rebounded
from an 0-3 start with a five-game winning streak that includes an upset on the
road against No. 3 Neptune.
The
Bears will be on the road against their division rivals, the Old Bridge
Knights. The Knights hope to give East Brunswick
their first loss of the season when the teams meet on Friday night.
“I’m
real proud of [my players] obviously, but as important as this game was, Friday
night we have a really tough division game at Old Bridge,
and that is even more important to us,” Henning said.
