Wall Boys Basketball Named Week 6 OIB Ortho Team of the Week | Shore Sports Insider
Week 6 OIB Ortho Team of the Week: Wall Boys Basketball
Shore Sports Insider is proud to partner with OIB Ortho this winter to present our weekly OIB Ortho Boys Basketball Team of the Week Award, recognizing standout Shore Conference programs for their accomplishments on the court.
We are also thrilled to welcome Joe Leone’s Italian Specialties as a co-sponsor, providing a generous $250 gift card each week to celebrate the winning team.
The Week 6 recipient of the 2026 OIB Ortho Boys Team of the Week is Wall, which could reasonably argue that it has been the Team of the Week each and every week of the 2025-26 season.
So, what made last week special? This year’s Crimson Knights did something no Wall team has done in about a half-century.
With its 41-39 victory in an all-out battle with rival Manasquan on Saturday, Wall punched its ticket to the Shore Conference Tournament semifinals for the first time in five decades and on Wednesday night against Red Bank Catholic, the Crimson Knights will play for the right to appear in the SCT championship game for the first time since 1974.
Wall’s road to a potential landmark appearance at Monmouth University in Friday’s championship game is a familiar one for this particular team, which beat two teams for a second time this season to reach the semifinals at Brookdale. Coming off their first loss of the season — a 52-46 loss to Colonia on Feb. 7 — Wall kicked off its Shore Conference Tournament run with a 57-42 win over No. 15 seed Ocean.
In the round-one win, the Crimson Knights opened up a 46-24 lead heading to the fourth quarter and held on to win by a comfortable margin after the Spartans cut their deficit to nine. Senior Dan Hennessy led Wall with 16 points, including 14 in the second half, while also pulling in six rebounds. Fellow senior Brian McKenna, meanwhile, did most of his damage in the first half, scoring 11 of his 13 points before the break to go with six rebounds and four assists.
The win over Ocean set up a rematch with Manasquan, which was motivated to put forth a winning effort after what Wall did to the Warriors in December at the Kevin Williams Christmas Classic. Facing a Manasquan team that was 23-0 vs. Wall since Andrew Bilodeau took over as head coach of the Warriors, Wall held Manasquan scoreless for more than 13 minutes to start the game, jumped out to a 21-0 lead and nailed down a 40-20 victory to end a decades-long drought vs. the Warriors in emphatic fashion.
As for the rematch, Wall expected a much different game and Manasquan gave it to the Crimson Knights. Manasquan led, 22-18, late in the second quarter when senior Jake DeBrito turned the tide with a three-pointer, followed by a putback at the buzzer that send Wall into the half ahead, 23-22.
The Crimson Knights led throughout the second half and were ahead, 41-36, with just over five minutes left in the game and would not score a point the rest of the way. Despite the offensive power-outage for the final five minutes, Wall held Manasquan to three points during the same stretch of time and scoreless over the final three-plus minutes. A pair of drawn-out possessions by each team during the last three minutes helped keep the scoring down, with Wall stopping Manasquan after the Warriors took a minute off the clock and turned the ball over with 22 seconds left.
Manasquan got one last chance and missed a halfcourt heave with the final seconds ticking away on a 41-39 Wall win over Manasquan, giving the Crimson Knights a two-game winning streak over a team it had not beaten this century prior to this season. DeBrito led Wall with 10 points, while Hennessy and fellow senior Liam Killea each added seven points and McKenna threw in six in the low-scoring affair.
To reach its first SCT final in 52 years, Wall will have to beat another team it defeated in December. Two days before beating Manasquan at the Kevin Williams Classic, Wall took down Red Bank Catholic, 44-34, in the first round of the Jim Ruhnke Bracket.
On Monday, Shore Sports Insider visited practice to present Wall head coach Bob Klatt and the team with a commemorative game ball and Joe Leone the owner of Joe Leone’s was there to present the team with a $250 Joe Leone’s Italian Specialties Gift Card, courtesy of our partners at Joe Leone’s, for a well-earned team meal.
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