| Date/Time: |
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| Location: |
Higher seed hosts
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| Score: |
91-72
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| Winner: |
Neptune |
NEPTUNE -- If the stories were true about the Ewing High
boys' basketball team's imploding, there were no signs of it
last night.
Instead, each of the players went out and gave a valiant
effort against the No. 2-seeded Neptune Scarlet Fliers. But
once again, the Blue Devils, seeded No. 7, saw their
season come to an end at the hands of Neptune, 91-72, in
the quarterfinals of the New Jersey State Interscholastic
Athletic Association Group III Central Tournament.
"I thought, considering how far down we were quickly, my
team played hard to whole rest of the way," head coach
Walt Bitner said. "They didn't hold their heads. They didn't
point fingers. They didn't get on one another. They played
as hard as they could. A better basketball team beat us.
That's a real good basketball team. I will be surprised if
they don't go a long, long way in the tournament. They
earned it.
"It isn't like we lost it; they beat us. When you lose it,
that's misery. The year we lost here with J.R. (Harrison)
still hurts, because I felt like we lost it. They didn't beat us.
This year, they flat out beat us. They were the better
basketball team tonight. I can go home tonight and say my
basketball team played as hard as they could, but the
better basketball team won."
The Blue Devils (13-11) found themselves trailing big early.
A 16-2 run to open the game was the culprit. Taquan Dean,
who finished with 30 points, got Neptune (20-6) going early
as it led, 26-8, at the end of the first quarter and, 51-23, at
the break.
"It does hurt losing to them again," senior Mike Nance,
who finished with 16 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks,
said. "We tried to bounce back from last year, to come out
and play hard, but they have some really good players,
some really good jump shooters. We just couldn't stop
them, I guess. It was a tough game."
Akeem Vaught finished with a team-high 19 points and
eight rebounds. Dayron Aaron reached double-figures with
14 points. Terrance Todd had 14 points for Neptune, while
Robert Layton and Marques Alston (10 rebounds) finished
with 12 and 10 points, respectively.
"It was a fun season," Nance said. "We had a good year.
We felt as though it should have been better, but we just
have to take it as it goes. I felt we had a good season. We
started out rough, but we bounced back and got a couple
of wins. We took a couple of hard losses, but we finished
strong."
Much of the season has been overshadowed by stories of
tension from within the team and from outside influences.
When asked if he was returning to coach another season,
Bitner wasn't clear.
"I have made no decisions about the future," he said. "I
have certainly made no decisions to the negative. I will let
a couple of days go by and talk with the athletic director,
but I love coaching basketball. We have a very good group
of young men coming back next year." |
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