Boys Basketball 2025-26 Coach of the Year: Mick Hughes, New Egypt

Shore Sports Insider 2025-26 Coach of the Year: Mick Hughes, New Egypt

A person could count on one hand the number of real opportunities the New Egypt boys basketball team has had to win an NJSIAA sectional championship and on the morning of Feb. 27, 2026, it did not seem like the Warriors were any closer to keeping count on a second hand.

New Egypt hosted a sectional championship game in 2011 and had played in four sectional semifinal games since, including once as a host team in 2018 against Point Pleasant Beach. None of those seasons ended with the Warriors capturing any hardware and with a No. 14 seed in the South Jersey Group I section, surely this year’s team could not do what its predecessors could not.

With a senior-heavy roster and the program’s all-time leading scorer at his disposal, head coach Mick Hughes was determined to help his team find a way. Following a disappointing regular season, this was the last chance for this close, likeable group to leave their mark at New Egypt.

“They are the greatest group of kids, and we just weren’t putting it together,” Hughes said of his team. “Their best characteristic is believing. We knew we had talent, it was just getting in the right head space. I think they probably saw their own mortality as seniors and realized that this is it, and when you combine that finality with that belief and the character that these kids have, you can do some special things.”

Over the next two weeks, Hughes and his team took their small Ocean County town and the supporting community on an unprecedented ride that caught the eye of high school basketball fans around the state. The Warriors went on to win their first ever NJSIAA sectional trophy, did so as a No. 14 seed and capped a finish to the season that lands Hughes the 2026 Shore Sports Insider Boys Basketball Coach of the Year.

With a group of four senior starters led by New Egypt all-time leading scorer Nolan Arnold, Hughes and his team entered the season with expectations as high as they have been since 2017-18. The success to match the expectations, however, eluded the Warriors for most of the season. They went 6-4 to finish third place in Shore Conference Class C South divisional play thanks to a pair of losses vs. Brick and two more vs. Pinelands, which turned into three losses to Pinelands when the Wildcats eliminated New Egypt from the Shore Conference Coaches Cup.

With a week left before the NJSIAA Tournament cutoff date, New Egypt was 8-12 and outside the top 16 teams in the South Jersey Group I section. Had the season ended at 20 games, the Warriors would not have made the state tournament at all.

New Egypt set themselves up to qualify for the NJSIAA Tournament with one more win by beating Manchester and Keyport to open its last week of the regular season. Then, the Warriors dropped their third meeting with Pinelands, which meant their postseason fate came down to a home game vs. Group I Pitman on cutoff Saturday on Feb. 14.

With a 44-40 win over Pitman, New Egypt not only clinched a spot in the state playoffs; they beat a South Jersey Group I team with program pedigree as a sectional title contender, albeit as the No. 11 seed in this year’s tournament.

New Egypt, meanwhile, was the No. 14 seed and heading into the tournament, the Warriors sported a 3-4 record vs. other Group I teams, including losses three Shore Conference teams in Central Jersey: Point Pleasant Beach, Shore Regional and Henry Hudson.

New Egypt’s turnaround continued in its state-tournament opener. The Warriors traveled to third-seeded Haddon Township and knocked off the Hawks, 42-36, to eliminate one of the favorites in the section while putting the rest of South Jersey on notice.

The main takeaway for the team was that if they can beat Haddon Township on the road, they can beat any team in the section. The takeaway for Hughes was that the 2-3 zone he featured in the first-round game plan fit his team well and he planned to stick with it going forward. The switch to zone was an idea Hughes came up with while watching a wave of game film during a two-day break caused by the blizzard that hit New Jersey in late February.

With confidence growing and an identity forming, New Egypt rode its momentum to sixth-seeded Penns Grove and did it again. The Warriors closed with a 20-point fourth quarter to close out a 47-38 win that sent them to the sectional semifinals for the fourth time since 2018.

No. 2 seed Palmyra stood between New Egypt and its first sectional final appearance since 2011 and the Warriors appeared well on their way, leading the Panthers, 45-33, with five minutes to go. Palmyra, however finished regulation on a 14-2 run and sent the game to overtime, then went up 56-52 during the extra session.

Senior Ryan Reynolds hit his second three-pointer of overtime and seventh of the game to cut the Palmyra lead to 56-55 with 42 seconds left, then Arnold hit a pair of go-ahead free throws with 26 seconds left. The Warriors delivered another stop on defense and polished off a 58-56 overtime win to knock out the second seed in the section.

The sectional title in South Jersey went through the No. 1 seed, Salem. For the second straight game, New Egypt pushed a home favorite to overtime, this time with Arnold tying the game on a layup with 1:36 left in the fourth quarter. In overtime, Arnold hit the winning free throws with 21 seconds left and the Warriors completed their improbable run to a sectional championship with a 48-46 overtime win.

Thanks to the defensive switch to the zone, the stellar play of Arnold and classmate Clyde Ferris, and a supporting cast embracing their roles, New Egypt beat the three top seeds in the section and guaranteed a winning percentage of no worse than .500 after entering the tournament with an 11-14 mark.

The surprise run almost became even more shocking, when the Warriors went to the fourth quarter of the Group I semifinal tied with Central Jersey champion Thrive, 43-43. The defending Group I champions then turned up the pressure and ended the game on a 13-0 run to end New Egypt’s season with a 59-45 defeat at the hands of the Titans.

The performance vs. Thrive demonstrated how far New Egypt had come since the regular season, when the Warriors lost to all three of the teams that Thrive dominated on the way to winning the Central Jersey title: Henry Hudson, Shore and Point Beach. Thrive established commanding leads over Henry Hudson and Shore by the end of the first quarter and pulled away vs. Point Beach by the end of the third.

In just its second season as a member of the Shore Conference, New Egypt became the first Shore team to ever win South Jersey Group I and just the fourth Ocean County team to win a sectional championship, joining Lakewood, Point Beach and St. Joseph’s of Toms River (now Donovan Catholic). Hughes will look to reset next season without the four senior starters – Arnold, Ferris, Reynolds and Dylan Harper – but this year’s team showed what is possible at New Egypt by the way they finished its four-year run.