Best of Both Worlds: No. 1 CBA Dominant to Open Lynch Era

MIDDLETOWN — No player on the current Christian Brothers Academy basketball team knows new head coach Brian Lynch as well as his nephew, junior Avery Lynch. There are also few players in the history of the Colts program more connected to that history than Avery Lynch — a third generation Colt whose uncle led CBA to its last NJSIAA state championship in 1995.

At the same time, Avery Lynch is one of three CBA newcomers who needed some help from his new teammates getting used to daily life on the Lincroft campus. Lynch and sophomores Izayah Cooper and Oymere Rene followed Brian Lynch from St. Rose to CBA when the elder Lynch was hired as the fourth varsity basketball coach in school history in May.

Following a summer of orientation for CBA’s holdover players to Lynch’s system and tendencies as a coach and a fall of orientation for Avery, Cooper and Rene, CBA has opened the 2025-26 season looking like a well-oiled machine poised to win its first Shore Conference Tournament championship since 2010 and make a run at its first NJSIAA state final appearance in 11 years.

“I was supposed to go (to CBA) until Brian got the job at St. Rose,” Avery Lynch said. “CBA has been in my family for a long time but I made the decision, wherever my uncle goes, that’s where I want to go. We all have the same goal and that’s to win.”

“It’s like, ‘I help you, you help me,'” Cooper said. “The guys helped us around the school with friends and all of that. On the court, if people don’t know the cuts and the movements and the plays, we tell them how to do it. And they do it, because they know it works.”

After laboring through the first half of its season-opener vs. Newark Collegiate Academy, CBA has dominated its opponents, including a 73-56 win in that opener after going to halftime tied, 27-27. The Colts followed with a mid-week road rout of Paramus Catholic, 70-33, and closed out its first eight days of 2025-26 with a resounding, 62-39, win Saturday over Hudson Catholic — the No. 8 team in the state, according to NJ Advance Media.

“Our identity is not playing through one guy,” said Lynch, who coached 2023-24 Shore Conference Player of the Year and Villanova freshman Matt Hodge, as well as 2024-25 Player of the Year and Northwester commit Jayden Hodge while at St. Rose. “The game really opens up for us when we realize that. It’s been fun to see the guys get into the game and start playing well and impacting it. Avery averaged about 24 points in the preseason and (in the first game) he didn’t do much scoring at all. But that doesn’t matter because we have such a deep team that we can get any given guy on a run for us.”

Avery Lynch opened the season with nine points in the win over Newark Collegiate, then followed it up with 20 points and six rebounds at Paramus Catholic, then put up 17 and six Saturday to lead the scoring for the Colts in the win over Hudson Catholic. Lynch started his high-school career coming off the bench for St. Rose as a freshman for a Purple Roses team that went 29-2, including its first ever Shore Conference Tournament championship and No. 1 ranking in the state to end the year.

Last season, Lynch moved into the starting five as a sophomore, with the Purple Roses winning a second straight SCT championship and reaching the NJSIAA Non-Public B final for the third consecutive season. During his sophomore year, Lynch put up 9.5 points and 3.8 rebounds per game as part of a deep, talented Purple Roses roster that boasted a four-star recruit in 2025 Shore Sports Insider Player of the Year Jayden Hodge and two senior All-Shore guards in Evan Romano and Bryan Ebeling.

Cooper is also off to a dazzling start as CBA’s point guard and while Lynch has helped dramatically improve the roster with his addition, Cooper has brought something to the team that it did not have prior to his arrival.

“I a world where we’re all running a hundred miles-and-hour, Izayah seems to do just fine,” Brian Lynch said. “He slows us down, takes his time, makes the right play.

“When Zay chose to come here, and I looked at our team, I felt like we had some guys who could shoot, guys with experience and some big guys. We needed somebody who could control the pace of the game and be a calming influence. Zay stepped up for us right from the very beginning. I said to him, ‘I know you’re only a sophomore, but it’s going to be your team to run and get organized.’ He does the best under pressure.”

In three games so far, Cooper has exhibited the kind of consistency that every coach wants out of his or her point guard. The sophomore guard is averaging 13.3 points and 5.3 assists over the first three games, with no fewer than 12 points and five assists in any of the three CBA wins. He kicked off the year by scoring 11 points in the first half vs. Newark Collegiate on the way to 15 points and five assists, then followed it up with 12 and five in the blowout win over Paramus Catholic.

On Saturday, Cooper’s poise at the point was again on display, with the six-foot guard scoring 13 points to go with six assists. He also set the tone with all four of his rebounds in the first quarter, during which CBA started with a 13-0 run and held Hudson Catholic scoreless for the first 7:50 of the game.

“I have been playing with Izayah since the fourth grade,” Avery Lynch said. “He is a true point guard. He always makes the right play and I’m a guy that feeds off that. He has definitely handled the pressure well. He gets pressured 94 feet every game and dealing with it. Last year, he was behind Jayden, Evan and all of them, but I knew what he could do. He’s a killer.”

“Last year, it was hard to just turn it over to him because we had such an established team,” Bryan Lynch said. “Jayden was a top 50 player in the country, so we had a guy like that in that lead role. I know he doesn’t look like it because he is small and still only a sophomore, but I still believe that he is one of most savvy point guards in the state. People just don’t realize it because he is only a sophomore. He hasn’t had that opportunity and now he is getting that opportunity.”

As a freshman a year ago, Cooper was the sixth man for St. Rose and showed flashes of being a lead guard while averaging 5.3 points and 2.9 assists on an experienced, championship-level team. Cooper was also named the Shore Sports Insider Freshman of the Year for his efforts in leading St. Rose to another SCT title and South Jersey Non-Public B title, the former of which St. Rose won by defeating CBA in the championship game.

“It was weird at first,” Cooper said of joining forces with CBA. “But then everybody got to know each other. We have school together, we practice together and we started bonding off the court.”

“It was like ‘We just played you guys three months ago for a title and now we’re on the same team?,'” Lynch said. “We have great group of kids here who want to win and know that’s where we’re at. You either accept a role and make it better, or you don’t. I think everybody from the CBA side has been welcoming and accepting that we have three new guys here who can help us become better and I think our guys that decided to come were looking at the situation and felt like this would be a great place for us to not only have great academics and be at a great school, but also fulfill our basketball goals.”

Rene also came off the St. Rose bench as a freshman and has started each of CBA’s first three games, in part due to the absence of senior guard Charlie Marcoullier, who is working his way back from a groin injury, according to Brian Lynch. Rene embraced his role as a defensive stalwart last season and has combined with returning CBA senior and sixth man Charlie Messano to give Lynch a duo of perimeter stoppers on the defensive end. Rene averaged a little more than two points and an assist per game at St. Rose as a freshman and is at an even five points and 4.7 rebounds per game through the first three of the current season.

Without its new coach and three transfers from St. Rose, CBA already had a strong nucleus due back from a 2024-25 team that reached the Shore Conference Tournament championship game for the first time in nine years. Even with Marcoullier — a starting guard for the Colts in each of the last two seasons — absent from the lineup to open the season, the Colts have three other impact contributors back from last year, including starting forwards Connor Andree and 6-foot-7 junior David Buley.

Andree is a third-year starter and at 6-foot-5, he has developed into a fundamentally sound high-post player on offense and a tough interior defender and rebounder on the other end. Andree put up 12 points in each of CBA’s first two wins and delivered seven points, six rebounds and three assists in Saturday’s win over Hudson Catholic.

“Coach Lynch’s style of basketball is very European,” Andree said of Brian Lynch, who played and coached professionally in Belgium. “We’re always cutting for each other. It’s all penetrate, pass, pass — we’re always looking to get the next guy open. It’s something that you don’t see a lot in high school.

“We don’t have many plays. It’s just playing off each other and make plays, so I think that is the twist that coach Lynch brings.”

Buley came alive late in the second quarter Saturday on the way to finishing with nine points and eight rebounds in the 23-point win. The junior big man is now averaging 9.7 points and 6.3 rebounds through three games and delivered a pair of two-hand dunks on Saturday.

Messano provided a lift off the bench Saturday before exiting the game with an ankle injury in the first half. Through two games, Messano — an All-Shore soccer player in the fall — was averaging eight points and four rebounds.

Senior Matt Veisz and junior Michael Barrett each came off the bench Saturday to block a shot, with Veisz also delivering a three-point play in the first half. Sophomore Connor Marcoullier — Charlie’s younger brother — knocked down a pair of second-half three-pointers for a six-point performance in Saturday’s win.

“We know we are going to wear teams out,” Cooper said. “We have a lot of depth. Guys get in the game, they know to go hard because somebody might be coming in and that keeps us fresh throughout the game.”

Lynch replaced former CBA teammate Geoff Billet as the head coach in May and is trying to lead CBA to its first SCT championship since Billet coached the Colts to back-to-back conference titles in 2009 and 2010 — Billet’s second and third seasons as CBA’s head coach.

“I love coach Billet,” Andree said. “But the school did what they thought was best for us and the program. I love coach Lynch too. He’s a great coach, the program needed him and it’s going to bring us back to how we’re supposed to be, which is one of the best teams in the state.”

In the early going, CBA looks like the overwhelming favorite to claim the SCT championship, but Lynch learned in his second season at St. Rose that nothing is a given in tournament play. In his first year with Matt and Jayden Hodge, the Purple Roses entered the SCT as the No. 2 seed, but loss to No. 11. Ranney in the SCT semifinal after leading by 13 with under 2:30 to play.

The difference between that 2023 St. Rose team and this year’s CBA team is the returning CBA players have made it to the SCT final and played the Purple Roses tough in a 45-36 loss to the two-time defending champion. Throw in the championship experience of Avery Lynch, Cooper and Rene and CBA is combination of a team with championship experience and one that is hungry to break through for the first time.

“It felt amazing to be part of CBA’s team for the first time as the coach in a real, official game,” Brian Lynch said after his official debut as CBA’s head coach. “It was surreal for me because I looked to my right and I see my dad sitting there. He has been supporting me my whole life and he was a CBA guy, part of the first graduating class. I see my coach (Ed Wicelinski) who had a huge impact on me and changed my life as a player and person. Seeing them in that scene, in this gym, it’s a really impactful feeling. That’s the only way I can describe it.”