Nottingham’s Kastro Montina drives to the basket against Allentown in the Central Jersey Group III playoffs. Photo by Wes Kirk Patrick
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Feb. 28: Back in November, Chris “The Baron” Raba passed out pencils and papers to his Nottingham High boys’ basketball team. Most of them had the same thing written down.
“Before the season we wrote our goals down for the team, and almost every player had the school record for wins as one of their goals,” Raba said. “We want to break the record, but there’s still a lot we want to do.”
Rich Jones dishes a “no look” pass. Photo by Wes Kirk Patrick
Actually, they still have to win more game to break the record, but the tying win came on Tuesday after the 2nd-seeded Northstars rolled to an 87-51 victory over 15th-seeded Allentown in an NJSIAA Group III Central first-round game.
“We played good,” Raba said. “I don’t really have much to say about this game, but tying the school record for wins, that was good. It means a lot.”
It is a record that has stood for 16 years, as the 2000-01 team coached by Nate Webber also had 21 victories. In doing so, Nottingham went from the 16th-seed in 2016 to a 2nd-seed this year, which is obviously one of the biggest jumps of any team in the state. Only a 16th seed getting a one seed would be better.
“We wanted to be first seed, of course,” forward Darell Johnson said. “We couldn’t do that, but we didn’t care. We still want to win every game and win sections.”
Johnson downplayed tying the record, only because Nottingham expected to do it.
“We got two good transfers,” he said. “Christian Ford has been great. We thought we’d do this.”
Ku’Jane Johnson was a little more fired up about it all.
Cliff Joseph goes in for the basket. Photo by Wes Kirkpatrick.
“This means a lot,” the reserve forward said. “It means everything. If we get another win we get the record. And then we hope we get states.”
The Northstars (21-5) took the drama out of this one early, which should be no surprise as they have beaten Allentown by at least 30 in all three meetings this year. It was 24-9 after one quarter and the Redbirds got no closer than 11 for the remainder of the game.
Cliff Joseph led the way with 20, Ford had 16 and Darell Johnson had eight points and 13 rebounds. Richie Jones started to get his shooting touch back with two 3-pointers and eight points, while Dan Ekwunife had six points and 10 rebounds.
Two players who don’t get a lot of time played the whole fourth quarter and made a big splash as Ku’Jane Johnson scored a career-high 12 points in eight minutes while Kastro Montina added nine points.
The victory allows Nottingham to host a second-round game against the winner of Tuesday’s Ocean Township-Matawan game. That game will be on Thursday in the Galaxy.
Ku’Jane Johnson hopes the season continues, just because of the good time he’s having.
“We knew from the beginning we could get this record,” he said. “We’ve got a good coaching staff, good chemistry, we can talk to each other. We have good practices. This is definitely a fun team to play on.”
