The Colonia varsity boys basketball team got a hard-fought win against Mendham on Monday, March 2nd. Senior Larenzo Jackson led the team with ten points against the Mendham Minutemen while Captains, Jimmy Frage and Brandon Wasserman, had eight and nine points respectively.
The fifth seed Patriots will now face the fourth seed Carteret Ramblers on Wednesday March 4th in the second round of states.
Colonia Clutches the First Half
Both teams had a slow offensive start to the game. Colonia and Mendham had a hard time getting their shots to fall, and the quarter ended with a score of only 9-8 in Mendham’s favor. In the beginning of the second quarter, Colonia had difficulty getting by Mendham’s defense, and the Patriots didn’t score until the four minute-mark. At this point they picked up some momentum and by halftime they had a lead of 17-14.
Patriots Fight Harder in the Second Half
While Colonia did have a score advantage, they were in some foul trouble. By the end of the third quarter the Patriots had committed eight fouls which gave the other team the bonus, which they knew could lead to some easy points for Mendham. However they managed to keep the score advantage and headed into the fourth quarter with a lead of 26-22.
The fourth quarter was the most intense of the game. Both teams were scoring consistently, both had trouble shutting down the other. However Colonia’s small lead had a big impact and forced Mendham to take some low-percentage shots. The Patriots scored 17 points in this quarter while Mendham scored 11, which led to a final score of 43-33 and a Patriots W.
Junior Jordan Derkack is a starting guard on the boys team. He said that “throughout the first three quarters, we weren’t having our best game. Before the fourth quarter we realized that this could be our last game if we didn’t play well in the next eight minutes. We pulled away and scored 17 points in the final quarter; and we moved onto the next round.”
Captain and Senior Jimmy Frage said that “what won us the game was our grit and teamwork when Mendham started to make a comeback. We came together and talked about what we had to do to get the win.”
Even though the Patriots started off slow, they were able to pick up momentum throughout the game. The first half of the game was not great for Colonia, who had a lot of difficulty scoring. Colonia agrees that halftime was essential to the win. They had to talk about what was going wrong, how to score more points and how to shut down Mendham. When they went back onto the court, they did just this.
The Patriots are determined to make the state finals this year. Good luck to the Colonia Patriots!
