Cleveland Shocks: Manasquan Beats Central at the Buzzer to Win WOBM Title

TOMS RIVER — For a team that would like to forget how last season ended, the Manasquan boys basketball team sure seems fine with recreating one of the more infamous finishes in the history of New Jersey High School basketball, only to come out on the winning side this time around.

On Monday night in Toms River — seven miles from where their 2023-24 season ended at the hands of Camden and playing the team whose home gym played host to that controversial NJSIAA Group II semifinal — the Warriors played a fourth quarter they would like to forget that set up a finish that they won’t soon forget.

Manasquan went scoreless for almost the entire fourth quarter and squandered an 11-point lead in to Central Regional, but won the WOBM Christmas Classic Jim Ruhnke Bracket, 30-28, on sophomore Logan Cleveland’s layup as the final buzzer sounded.

“This game and a lot of the other games this year, they have been crazy,” Cleveland said after delivering his first major moment as a varsity player. “It’s really fun, though. I just started running. It didn’t know what to do.”

Logan Cleveland beats the buzzer and Manasquan wins the WOBM Classic over Central 30-28. Ugly game with a crazy finish. It’s becoming the Manasquan Special. pic.twitter.com/sKwsDBZ5h5

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) December 31, 2024

Central outscored Manasquan, 11-0, in the fourth and 19-6 in the second half prior to the final possession, with senior Jaycen Santucci hitting a contested baseline shot with 27 seconds left that tied the game, 28-28. The tie was the first since 0-0.

Without using a timeout, Manasquan brought the ball into the front court for the final possession and, unlike the majority of the second half, avoided turning the ball over. The Warriors committed as many turnovers in the second half as they scored points (eight), although Central failed to take full advantage of its defensive success by converting it into sufficient offense.

Manasquan senior Griffin Linstra — last year’s would-be hero against Camden before his buzzer-beating layup was taken away — set up the final play with the ball in his hands, but Central ran two defenders at him to force him to give it up. Senior Brandon Kunz caught the ball on the left wing and fired a pass that whizzed past the reach of Central senior Royalty Riley and made it to Manasquan junior Jack O’Reilly on the right block.

Riley recovered to body O’Reilly and when the defense collapsed on O’Reilly, the 6-foot-4 junior calmly pivoted toward daylight and found his teammate, Cleveland alone on the other side of the lane. O’Reilly shoveled a pass to the 6-5 sophomore, who rose up and laid the ball in. Before the ball could hit the floor, the buzzer sounded and Manasquan began celebrating its fifth WOBM Classic championship.

The parallels to Manasquan’s 46-45 loss to Camden in the Group II semifinal could be described as eerie. In that game — played at Central’s home gym — Manasquan led by as many as 13 points going into the fourth quarter. The Warriors led by 13 going into the second half on Monday and 11 going into the fourth quarter. Like Central did on Monday, Camden held Manasquan scoreless for the entire fourth quarter leading up to the final shot. In both instances, the ball passed through the cylinder before the buzzer sounded, but in last year’s game, the officials decided it did not count after initially counting it. This time, the call was emphatic — and correct: basket good.

Amid Manasquan’s celebration of another buzzer-beater and another WOBM Classic title was the head-scratching struggle the Warriors endured in the fourth quarter. In addition to being outscored, 14-0, vs. Camden last year, Manasquan lost its second game of the season to St. Rose by surrendering a 12-point fourth-quarter lead with just over four minutes left in the game. Turnovers were at the center of that collapse as well, with the Purple Roses going on a 19-2 run to end the game with Manasquan failing to score from the field during that stretch.

“I think we definitely need to work on the way we’re playing in the fourth quarter, but that’s why it’s happening now,” Linstra said. “We want this to happen now and not in February and March. I think last year, we didn’t have a lot of opportunities like this and then against Camden, we didn’t score in the fourth quarter and ended up losing. It’s good that this happened now so we can work on it to make sure it doesn’t happen when we’re trying to win a championship.”

Instead of suffering the same fate Monday, the Warriors composed themselves for the final possession, trusted the offense, trusted one another, and finally scored the only two points they would need in the fourth quarter. It was also the second game-winner at the buzzer this season; senior Matteo Chiarella banked in a shot beyond midcourt to beat Rutgers Prep, 64-61, in the season-opener.

“We just have a lot of trust in each other,” Linstra said. “They got the ball out of my hands on the last play and I have a lot of trust in Brandon and Jack to make the right play and Logan Cleveland as well. That’s what we work on in practice — that’s our circle-under action. We just have a lot of trust in each other and a lot of togetherness on this team. We know we can win at any point.”

“We trust the coaches drawing up the play and we just try to execute it as best we can,” Cleveland said. “Griffin is great leader. He teaches us a lot, but he is also a great teammate. That definitely has an effect on everybody.”

Cleveland finished with eight points and eight rebounds, sophomore Rey Weinseimer led Manasquan with a team-high 10 points, and Linstra contributed eight points, four rebounds, four assists and three steals. Linstra was named Ruhnke Bracket Most Valuable Player, while Weinseimer was an all-tournament selection.

Kunz led a defensive effort that held Santuccu to two points on no field goals heading into the fourth quarter. In the fourth, however, Santucci struck for six critical points, which accounted for six of Central’s final eight points of the night. Santucci finished second in the Shore Conference in scoring as a junior with just over 22 points per game and entered Monday averaging 21.5 through his team’s first four games.

“They are definitely a great team,” Cleveland said of Central. “We have good scouting and we prepared very well. I think we did a great job on defense, stopping their leading scorer. Santucci is very good, so think we did a good job on him and then just covering their other guys and playing good team defense.”

Before Manasquan won it at the buzzer, Jaycen Santucci tied it with 27 seconds left. https://t.co/NqUZRTr52U pic.twitter.com/AIYPJuQ9gS

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) December 31, 2024

Santucci’s first points of the game came on the free-throw line with 5:59 to play in the third quarter, which was also when Central crossed into double-digits for the first time at 24-11.

“(Santucci) is a special player,” Linstra said. “The free throws, I thought, got him going. Brandon is tough and is one of the most athletic kids who has ever been through Manasquan High School. He just finds a way to guard the other team’s best player every day.”

Manasquan held Central’s entire team to nine points in the first half in building a 22-9 lead.

“We had a really good first half and that gave us some cushion,” Linstra said. “We just take so much pride in our defense. They couldn’t really score on us and they hit a lot of tough shots. They have a lot of really good players and there’s a lot of respect in the matchup. We might see them again.”

With Santucci struggling through three quarters, seniors Aidan Graham and Jayson King carried the Central offense. Graham finished with a game-high 11 points behind three three-pointers, while King scored seven — giving the senior trio 26 of the 28 Central points. Riley scored the other two, which came on a layup that cut Central’s deficit to 28-26 with over 2:30 remaining.

Cleveland’s game-winner helped him atone for a pair of missed free throws with 2:22 remaining and Manasquan clinging to a 28-26 lead.

Weinseimer did most of his damage in the third quarter, during which he scored all six of Manasquan’s points and scored twice to push the Warriors lead to 15 — the largest lead of the game for Manasquan.

With Monday’s win, Manasquan has played three of its first six games against teams ranked in the top five of the Shore Sports Insider Top 10 (No. 1 St. Rose, No. 5 Rumson-Fair Haven and No. 4 Central) and two against state-ranked teams, according to NJ Advance Media (St. Rose and Rutgers Prep). Manasquan is 3-1 in those games against ranked opponents and its other two games are an 80-42 rout of St. John Vianney and a hard-fought, 54-48 win over Donovan Catholic in the WOBM semifinals.

“We’re so battle-tested; we’re five games in and we have probably played four of the toughest teams we are going to play all year,” Linstra said. “That’s what we want: we want to get better every day. We want to play in this kind of environment. This was a very hostile crowd tonight. I think a lot of people wanted us to lose, so it was nice to pull it out in the end.”