Dane “Sponge Bob” Riley of Hamilton West puts up the 1 handed jumper against WWPN in the MCT opening round. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com
Feb. 15: Jay Malloy would have been more impressed with his team’s late-but-unsuccessful rally if he had not seen so many of them this year.
Malloy’s 10th-seeded Hamilton West boys’ basketball team suffered a 50-45 loss at 7th-seeded West Windsor-Plainsboro North tonight in the first round of the Mercer County Tournament and will meet Pennington in a consolation game.
The Hornets (10-11) trailed 42-27 early in the fourth quarter but battled to within 46-43 and had a chance to tie it. But hot-shooting Zahir Davis, who sparked the comeback with eight fourth-quarter points, missed the a 3-point attempt (after making two straight) and WWPN held on by going 4-for-4 from the foul line in the final 31 seconds.
“Unfortunately, that’s what we do,” Malloy said. “When things start to go bad we let it avalanche and then once we get to a certain point everybody starts to dig deep and we’ve already dug a hole too deep for us to get out of.
“If we just did the things we need to do early in the game, then we wouldn’t put ourselves in that situation. My guys came back, played hard, made some shots but when you wait that long it ain’t gonna work out for you most times.”
Hamilton, which lost all three meetings with WWPN (14-7) this year, had a rough start as it missed numerous lay-ups and committed nine first-half turnovers. West Windsor’s first basket came with 3:20 left in the first quarter and, believe it or not, tied the game at 2-2.
“We were up 2-0 four minutes in and we should have been up eight to 10-0,” Malloy said. “I think that completely changed the game. We couldn’t make shots and we had costly turnovers.
“We just didn’t come to play today. Individually some of us were not here mentally, or whatever the case may be. Obviously, as a whole, it just didn’t work out. We had some guys that weren’t ready to go for whatever reason. I thought we had two good practices and we didn’t show up today as a team.”
Hamilton High West’s Zahir Davis takes flight against WWPN. Photo by Michael A. Sabo
Dane “Sponge Bob” Riley led the Hornets with 16 points and 15 rebounds but Hamilton had trouble getting him the ball in the final quarter as he had just two shots. Davis had eight points while Tyler Beebee tallied 10.
Nottingham boys have easy time with Princeton, Steinert falls despite Mazur’s 30
Top-seeded Nottingham had little trouble disposing of 16th-seeded Princeton as the Northstars took a 101-62 victory in the Galaxy.
Richie Jones poured in 30 points as his quest for 1,000 continues. Cliff Joseph added 24, Darell Johnson scored 20 and Kostro Montina added 14 for the Northstars (20-2), who will host Notre Dame in Saturday’s quarterfinals.
Fifteenth-seeded Steinert fell to 2nd-seeded Trenton Catholic, 76-50, but Mario Mazur put on a show for the Spartans with 30 points.
Steinert girls overcome Robbinsville; Nottingham ousted by ND
The fifth-seeded Steinert girls had a shaky first quarter but managed to come back for a 53-36 win over 12th-seeded Robbinsville. The Spartans cut it to 22-20 at halftime and took control by outscoring the Ravens 17-4 in the third quarter.
Natalie Mehl and Tatiana Dorner each scored 12 points and combined for 11 rebounds and 10 steals. Jayda Bing had 10 points, five rebounds, two assists, two blocked shots and three steals.
Steinert (18-5) will visit 4th-seeded Notre Dame for a quarterfinal game, as the Irish took a 55-25 victory over 13th-seeded Nottingham. Liz Kerekes had 17 for the Northstars.
The Spartans met ND on opening day this year and dropped a 59-45 decision. Steinert had a 27-24 halftime lead before the Irish outscored the home team 26-4 in the third quarter.
MCT Quarterfinal match-ups are set
There were no upsets according to the seeds in today’s first-round games, so the Saturday quarterfinal match-ups are as follows:
Boys: No. 8 ND at No. 1 Nottingham, No. 5 Ewing at No. 4 Hightstown; No. 6 Hopewell at No. 3 Trenton; No. 7 WW-P North at No. 2 TCA.
Girls: No. 8 Hopewell at No. 1 TCA, No. 5 Steinert at No. 4 ND, No. 6 Ewing at No. 3 Pennington, No. 7 Stuart at No. 2 Allentown.
