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Buccing the Trend: Red Bank Rallies for Rare Win over Rumson

Matt Manley|January 17, 2025|Last Updated January 21, 2025

RUMSON — Last season, the Red Bank Regional boys basketball team reached the 20-win threshold, won its first outright Shore Conference division title in 17 years and reached an NJSIAA sectional championship game for the first time in a decade — a resurgent season for a program with a proud tradition.

Something, however, was missing and the holdovers from last year’s team knew exactly what it was and where to get it: a win over their neighbor to the east.

Red Bank ended a five-year drought without a win over Ridge-Road-rival Rumson-Fair Haven by rallying from an 11-point second-half deficit to knock off the Bulldogs in overtime, 46-44. The win is just the second time Red Bank has beaten Rumson since the start of the 2015-16 season, with the Bulldogs boasting a 11-1 record against the Bucs from 2015-16 to the start of play on Thursday night.

Senior Zayier Dean led Red Bank with 14 points, including three game-tying free throws with 1.1 seconds left in regulation after drawing a foul on a three-point attempt. He also scored what proved to be the winning basket in overtime, giving him nine of his team-high scoring total after halftime.

“Maybe it’s a rivalry now,” Red Bank coach George Sourlis said. “I have always felt it’s not a rivalry when one team wins all the time and they (Rumson) have won all the time. You can ask them if they think it’s a rivalry. It’s one game, it’s January and we’ve got a long way to go, but I’m happy we go 46 (points) and they didn’t.”

“I still remember the taste we had after losing to them last year,” Dean said. “The atmosphere was crazy. We can’t base our season just off this win, especially because we are going to see them again.”

Since beating Rumson-Fair Haven in a regular-season game in 2014-15, Red Bank has played the Bulldogs at least once every year and beaten them just one time — during the 2018-19 regular season. The seniors on this year’s Red Bank squad were two years away from their freshman seasons the last time the Bucs were victorious in the Ridge Road rivalry and were acutely aware of it.

“We didn’t beat them my sophomore year, didn’t beat them my junior year, my freshman year, when I was watching from the Buc Deck, we didn’t beat them that year either,” Red Bank senior Ryan Fisher said. “It’s hard coming in here and focusing because it feels like I’ve got to get a win over these guys before I graduate. It just feels good to get one my senior year.”

Heading into the fourth quarter, it did not appear that Thursday’s game at Rumson-Fair Haven would be the night that Red Bank ended its torment against the Bulldogs. Rumson led, 36-25, in the final seconds of the third quarter before Red Bank senior Ronald Richardson scored on a follow to close out the quarter, cutting the home team’s lead to 36-27.

Over the final eight minutes of regulation, Red Bank put the clamps on Rumson’s offense. The Bucs started the fourth with seven straight points for a 9-0 run that cut Rumson’s lead to 36-34 before 6-foot-9 junior Luke Cruz nailed a corner three-pointer to make it 39-34 with five minutes to go. Fisher answered with a pull-up at 4:43 left in the fourth to make it 39-36, at which point both offenses hit a wall.

For the next four-plus minutes, neither team could score against the other and while Rumson’s scoring drought lasted five minutes, the Bucs were on the verge of failing to capitalize in the final seconds. With 13 seconds remaining, Rumson had possession under its own basket, still clasping onto a 39-36 lead, but with a chance to seal the win if the Bulldogs could avoid a turnover and hit their free throws.

Just as it did in Tuesday’s 61-55 loss at Red Bank Catholic, Rumson struggled to inbound the ball in the final minute and it was Dean who delivered the big play for Red Bank with his team down by three. Dean intercepted the inbound pass at midcourt and as he raced up the floor, Sourlis called Red Bank’s final timeout — a decision the veteran head coach admitted to second-guessing almost immediately.

“There were two black shirts between (Dean) and the basket and as I’m calling a timeout, I realize Anthony (Moore) is standing in the corner all by himself for a wide-open three,” Sourlis said. “I’m thinking, ‘Why did I do that? We would have had a chance to tie the game right on the spot.'”

“At first I was thinking, ‘Why did he call a timeout?,'” Dean said. “Then, I’m just like, ‘It’s cool. We got the ball, we can regroup a little bit.’ There was a split-second where I was like, ‘Why?’ but I know coach knows what he is doing. I believe in him.”

Rumson immediately revealed its strategy of fouling Red Bank before it could get a look at a potential game-tying three-point shot. The Bulldogs had three fouls to give before Red Bank would enter the bonus and by the time Rumson committed all three fouls, there was only 2.3 seconds left. A tipped inbound pass that went out of bounds knocked it down to an even two seconds and Red Bank was down to its final opportunity.

“We thought they were going to foul us to put us on the line for two shots,” Sourlis said. “We did something just a little different so that they couldn’t and it worked. We just wanted a little separation so they would have to chase to foul us and if they did chase and foul us, hopefully it would be in the act of shooting and that’s exactly what happened.”

Sophomore Justin Valentino surveyed the court as Red Bank ran its action and found Dean curling into the left corner. Rumson gave the foul, but it came as Dean was rising up for a three-point attempt that hit the front rim. The foul was called and Dean would shoot three free-throws with a chance to tie the game by hitting all three.

“We have prided ourselves on running our stuff — what we call our specials,” Sourlis said. “We ran it twice in a row and they fouled us both times. All I did was just switch guys in two spots so Zayier could come get it. I thought it was going in when he shot it.”

After Dean got the first two to drop, Rumson coach Chris Champeau called his final timeout of regulation in an attempt to ice Dean and go over his team’s box-out assignments and offensive strategy should it be necessary. Meanwhile, in the Red Bank huddle, there was consensus: Dean was going to make the last free throw and tie the game.

“He’s a gamer,” Sourlis said. “He wants to win. He has played so much basketball in his life and whether he is playing great or not, he just keeps playing.  He came off the floor during that timeout and he just said, ‘I’m making it. I don’t care if they call another timeout. I’m making it.”

“My teammates believed in me,” Dean said. “They told me I was going to knock down the free throws. It’s just countless hours in the gym, shooting free throws while you’re tired. I was just thinking to myself, ‘This is where it pays off. You can’t fold here. Game on the line, gotta hit them.'”

Not only did Dean drain the game-tying free throw, but Red Bank forced a Rumson turnover on the ensuing inbounds play. Rumson senior David Carr attempted a long pass down court and it hit the ceiling structure, giving Red Bank a chance underneath Rumson’s basket with 1.1 seconds left. Richardson, however, could not handle the inbounds pass cleanly and time expired.

Carr gave Rumson a quick 41-39 lead with a driving layup to start overtime, then knocked down a pair of go-ahead free throws after Richardson scored to tie the game for Red Bank. Fisher responded with a pull-up floater along the baseline for a 43-43 tie and after a pair of free throw attempts by Cruz rattled in and out, Dean broke down the defense and scored at the rim for a 45-43 Bucs lead.

“Those three free throws were the momentum switch we needed,” Fisher said. “We had been battling all game, trying to get the lead and once we finally tied it and got it to overtime, we knew it was our game.”

Junior Luke Lydon made 1-of-2 free throws to cut Red Bank’s lead to 45-44 and Fisher came back with 1-for-2 at the line to make it 46-44 with 25.7 seconds left.

Rumson ran down the clock and got the ball to Cruz in the post for a final shot. The University of Pennsylvania commit rose up and took a 10-foot jumper over the reach of Richardson and it hit the back iron as time expired. Cruz turned in a major all-around effort for Rumson with 13 points, 16 rebounds and four blocked shots. Carr, meanwhile, led Rumson with 15 points.

Red Bank used multiple defenders on Cruz throughout the game to prevent him from getting clean looks from beyond the three-point arc, with Richardson meeting him when he went into the paint.

“He is such a great player, you can’t just assign one guy to him,” Sourlis said of the gameplan against Cruz. “We just had certain keys against him and we tried to keep him in certain spots where we felt like he couldn’t hurt us. Ronald’s physicality was certainly a big factor in that, but we had to guard him with five people.”

Free-throw shooting was a strength for Rumson in the third quarter, when the Bulldogs went 6-for-6 as a team as Red Bank was attempting to mount a second-half comeback. In the fourth quarter and overtime, however, the Bulldogs shot just 3-for-8 from the line.

Rumson’s turnover woes also were a factor. After committing two turnovers on inbounds passes late in Tuesday’s loss to RBC, the Bulldogs committed turnovers on their final four possessions of the fourth quarter.

“It’s tough against any team when they are pressuring you,” Fisher said. “We did see that they get a little sloppy sometimes and we might be able to get some turnovers. But they are a great team, we’ll see them again at RBR, so I’m excited for that. We know they’ll be ready too.”

Richardson finished with 12 points, with both Fisher and senior Anthony Moore contributing seven apiece. Moore also grabbed nine rebounds while Fisher pulled in five.

The Bulldogs’s struggle to score in the fourth quarter mirrored Red Bank’s difficulty scoring during the first quarter. The Bucs scored four points on their first two possessions, then missed their next 15 shots and went more than nine minutes between made field goals. In the second quarter, all three of Red Bank’s field goals were three-pointers — one each by Dean, Fisher and Richardson.

“When you shoot 1-for-16 to start the game and score five points in a quarter — I just thought we didn’t stop,” Sourlis said. “We just battled, won loose balls, I thought we controlled the glass. I thought we played a little too fast in spots, but we played our butts off.”

“We’ve got a bunch of kids who are never out of the fight,” Fisher said. “We’re going to play hard until the final buzzer, whether we’re down 20 or up 20. That’s just what we do and that’s what Sourlis has engrained in us.”

The Ridge Road rivalry will have a part II in 2025, with Red Bank hosting Rumson on Feb. 4 in a game that could have Class A Coastal division title and Shore Conference Tournament seeding implications. For now, however, Red Bank owns a two-game lead over Rumson in the A Coastal standings and is currently second in the Shore Conference in power points, behind only Manasquan.

“They don’t stop and that’s what makes this team different,” Sourlis said. “We showed it tonight.”

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