Lions Fall in Basketball Sectional Semis

The Lacey High School boys basketball team was banking on the old sports adage that it is hard to beat a team three times in a row when it took to the court in Saturday’s NJSIAA South Jersey Group III semifinal against Shore Conference Class B South rival and second-seeded Manchester.

Manchester dispelled that theory, beating Lacey, 48-32, its third win of the season over the  Class B South co-champion.

“They’re a very good defensive team and in our three games, we haven’t been able to find a way to score against them,” said Lacey coach Ryan O’Rourke, who reached the sectional semifinals as a player for Lacey in the late 1980s. “We don’t have too many shooters on our team, so we need to move the ball and get it inside to score we couldn’t get to the rim and when we did, they were there.”

Lacey lost both regular-season games vs. Manchester, but ultimately tied the Hawks in the standings with an 8-2 divisional record, which meant the teams shared the Class B South regular-season championship.

Lacey came into the game having scored 66 and 53 points, respectively, with victories over Gloucester Institute of Technology and Deptford, but continued its season-long offensive struggles against the Hawks.

“We had been a little bit quicker, a little more crisp running our sets in the first two games of the tournament,” O’Rourke said. “Manchester’s very good defensively and the pressured our ball-handlers and we turned the ball over. The bottom line is we turned the ball over 25 times and you’re never going to win when you turn it over that many times, especially for us because we don’t score very many points.”

Manchester won the first meeting between the teams, 49-39, and the second, 38-34, so the Lions were hoping the third time would be the charm.

 The Lions led 8-7 after the first quarter and went on an 8-1 run in the second quarter to take an 18-11 lead with three minutes to play in the first half.

It was then, however, that Manchester turned up its defense and scored nine straight points to end the half.

"They wanted to sit in their zone and slow the game down and we just had to get them out of it,” Manchester senior captain and four-year varsity player Nate Nickens said.  “We wanted to get out into transition, get a lead and make them come out of our zone, because that’s not the kind of defense we wanted to go against.”

After Dylan Joslin tied the game at 20,. Manchester answered with eight unanswered points, all by Monwell Brown, who led all scorers with 15.

Lacey crept back to within 28-24 on a free throw and a 3-pointer by junior Tasheen Carrow, but Manchester scored the next 10 points to pull away.

Carrow led Lacey with 10 points, including three 3-pointers, and senior Deon Smith added eight – all  in the first half.

Manchester’s defensive game plan centered on Smith, the Lions' leader in points, rebounds, steals and blocks per game.

“They pressured our guards and did a good job of keeping the ball away from Deon and then keeping Deon away from the ball on the glass,” O’Rourke said. “They have the athletes that can jump with (Smith) and Nickens is a good defender too, so they did a good job there.”