Bank Statement: Defensive Gem Sends Red Bank Catholic Boys to First Shore Final

MIDDLETOWN — To a man, the players on the Red Bank Catholic boys basketball team are dubbing the Shore Conference Tournament their “revenge tour.” For the second straight game Wednesday night, RBC set out to beat a team that handed the Caseys one of their six losses during the regular season and if they were successful, another opportunity at revenge awaited them in the final.

Head coach Tyler Schmelz, however, knew it was much more than that. While his players set out to make good for their shortcomings in 2025-26, Schmelz — a former player at RBC and now in his 10th year as head coach — saw a chance to make good on generations of close calls and near misses.

Whether it was avenging a December loss to Wall or finally getting the RBC boys program to a stage of the Shore Conference Tournament that had long eluded it, the Caseys silenced an army of ghosts Wednesday at Collins Arena on the campus of Brookdale Community College.

With brilliant two-way performance by junior Gavin Biasi and major contributions from the rest of its starting lineup, Red Bank Catholic — the No. 3 seed in the Shore Conference Tournament — shut down No. 2 Wall in a 44-31 victory that sends RBC to the Shore Conference Tournament championship game for the first time in program history.

“This is a big win for our program,” said Schmelz, who guided RBC to just its second ever SCT semifinal appearance in 2022, which the Caseys lost to Manasquan. “We have been working really hard. We have a great group of kids and they deserve it. For some of them, this is a first or second go-round in this tournament. They don’t know that it’s been 10 years coming.”

“It means a lot,” senior guard and second-year starter James Hankowski said. “I feel like we have been underdogs this whole season and now we’re in the championship for the first time. It’s a big spot for us and we just have to be ready to play again.”

Biasi scored a game-high 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and led a defensive effort that held Wall’s two leading scorers to four combined points. He also jump-started a 12-1 run that turned a two-point game with six minutes left into a 38-25 with under two minutes to go. Biasi kicked off the run with a three-pointer and converted a layup as he was fouled to make it 37-25. A free-throw by senior Ryan Saxton extended the lead to 38-25 with 1:44 left, which marked RBC’s largest lead of the game.

Saxton was also instrumental in the defensive effort while adding seven points and seven rebounds. While Biasi’s primary assignment was to guard Wall leading scorer Brian McKenna, Saxton drew second-leading Crimson Knights scorer Dan Hennessy. Biasi held McKenna to four points on 1-for-10 shooting, with McKenna’s lone field goal coming on a three-pointer that made the score 38-28 with 1:30 left in the game. Saxton made life even tougher on Hennessy, who did not score in the game. McKenna entered Wednesday averaging 16.5 points with Hennessy averaging 11.4.

“We’re a defense-before-offense team,” Saxton said. “We always put in the work to get better every day and then we just leave it all out on the floor. Last year, we were more offensive-minded and less defensive and with the personnel we have this year, we had to switch it up and become that team that holds teams down.”

“That’s a tough gym and Gavin’s a great defender,” Schmelz said. “He has been playing very well defensively. He has been getting credit for his offense, but he is a defense-first player. That definitely showed tonight.”

Hankowski added nine points on three three-pointers, the last two of which proved to be back-breakers for Wall in the Crimson Knights’ struggle to stay close to the Caseys. After Biasi nailed a three to make it 29-24 with 5:45 left, Hankowski came back with a three-pointer of his own on the next possession to push RBC’s lead to 32-24.

Back to back threes by Gavin Biasi and James Hankowski have put RBC up 32-24 with 5 to go. pic.twitter.com/hIzgxxHuRS

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 19, 2026

With two minutes left and RBC having committed turnovers on its prior three possessions, Hankowski drained his third three-pointers to push the Caseys lead to 35-25.

“I’m always going to shoot my shot when I’m open, because that’s my game,” Hankowski said. “My thoughts were just ‘Get this game done.'”

James Hankowski with a dagger to put RBC ahead by 10 with 2 minutes left. It’s now 38-28 with 1:26 left. pic.twitter.com/ZMB76aqC8e

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 19, 2026

Junior Tyler Hager tied the defensive performance together with his presence in the pain. The 6-foot-7 junior set the tone by blocking three shots in the first 10 minutes and went on to finish with six points, 15 rebounds, four assists, two steals and those three blocked shots. Two of Hager’s three field goals in the game were dunks, including one in which he took off from two steps inside the free-throw line off a steal, capping a 10-0 run that gave RBC a 10-3 lead in the early going.

“Tyler is an interesting match-up because he is way more defensive than offensive,” Schmelz said. “He doesn’t have a lot of game experience on the offensive side, but his instincts on defense are fantastic. Defense is definitely where he shines.”

Junior point guard Ryder Ciorciari added five points and three assists, including a pair of driving layups during the third quarter to give Wall leads of 20-17 and 24-20.

Wall bounced back from the 10-3 deficit thanks to junior Navin Tu, who came off the bench to score all 10 of his points in the first half, including eight in the second quarter. The Crimson Knights went on a 10-0 run to flip a 12-5 deficit into a 15-12 lead thanks to a stretch of nine minutes during the second and third quarters in which Wall held RBC without a field goal. The Caseys hit three free throws before halftime to tie the game, 15-15, at the break and Biasi broke the drought with a three-pointer from the top of the key that gave RBC an 18-17 lead with 5:42 left in the third quarter.

Navin Tu was huge off the bench for Wall with 8 of their 10 points in the 2nd. pic.twitter.com/DPMR3mBpa3

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 19, 2026

“This is a challenging place to score,” Schmelz said of Collins Arena. “We’ve played a bunch of showcase games here before and you could see it in the first game tonight, the girls games last night — it’s hard to make shots. It’s not easy, so that affected both teams tonight. And both teams are good defensively.

“We were stagnant offensively in the first half and needed to get moving. Once you get one to go, you get the next one to go. I thought we played poorly offensively in the first half and I thought we would get going in the second half, but they didn’t shoot very well in the first half either and they usually get hot too. So I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.”

McKenna made his presence felt despite the difficult offensive game with seven rebounds and four steals, while Hennessy also grabbed seven boards. Senior Liam Killea chipped in eight points, three assists and three steals, while senior Jake DeBrito poured in seven points for Wall thanks to a pair of three-pointers.

Wednesday’s win avenged a 44-34 RBC loss to Wall on Dec. 26 in the first round of the Kevin Williams Classic. In that game, RBC cut a Wall lead to 37-34 lead with 5:30 left before Wall held the Caseys without a point for the final 5:30. In the rematch at Brookdale, RBC flipped the script by holding Wall to two points on no field goals for the first 6:30 of the fourth quarter.

“I think we’ve learned a lot over the last two months about how to get better and what to do in those situations,” Hankowski said. “We trust each other and we got it done.”

The semifinal win over Wall came after Red Bank Catholic beat Ranney, 60-55, after the Panthers had defeated RBC, 62-57, in double-overtime in the second of two meetings between the teams in Shore Conference Class B North divisional play. With two revenge wins on the way to the program’s first ever Shore Conference Tournament championship, RBC will look for what would be its most meaningful revenge win yet.

On Friday night at OceanFirst Bank Arena on the campus of Monmouth University, Red Bank Catholic will take on No. 1 seed Christian Brothers Academy at 8 p.m. in a rematch of what could very well be the game of the year during the 2025-26 Shore Conference season. RBC took a 13-point lead on CBA with 9:30 left to go and 56-52 with under two minutes left at CBA on Jan. 17, only to watch the Colts rally to send the game into overtime and win, 69-65.

After a road win over Colts Neck three nights later, Hager admitted the loss still stung, but the Caseys had every intention of seeing CBA again during tournament time.

“That was a tough loss,” Hager said at the time. “We should have won that game, definitely, but we will see them again. This game is all about wins and losses and you’ve got to learn from all of them. Yes, it was a tough loss, but we had to move on.”

The CBA-vs.-RBC match-up means either CBA will win its first SCT championship since 2010 and 17th overall or RBC will celebrate its first ever championship and biggest win in program history. For now, the Caseys are celebrating handing Wall its first loss of the season to a Shore Conference opponent and a program milestone.

“Playing as a team is going to matter a lot,” Hankowski said. “You can’t point fingers out there. You have to play as one to beat a team like that. I think we can win if we do all those things. Wall was 19-1 going into today. We were definitely the underdog, so no one is unbeatable.”

To add to the festivities Friday night, the Red Bank Catholic girls team will play St. John Vianney at 6 p.m. in search of its second straight SCT championship.

“We just see it as another game against a team in the Shore Conference,” Saxton said. “Nobody is unbeatable. We’re going to leave it all out there and we’re already hyped up to play that game. It’s an RBC double-header at Monmouth University. It’s going to be great.”