Cup Crazy: Brick Memorial Rallies to Win 2025 Coaches Cup

BRICK TWP. — As one of only two senior regulars on the Brick Memorial boys basketball team, Joe Witter was disappointed that his team would not play in the Shore Conference Tournament in his final year of high school basketball.

An unforgiving schedule that included five games against teams ranked among the top five teams in the Shore Conference coupled with a key injury in the middle of the season was too much for the Mustangs to overcome and they fell just short of the cutoff for the 20-team Shore Conference Tournament.

The Shore Conference Coaches Cup gave Brick Memorial and other teams in similar situations a chance to make a run at a championship before the start of the NJSIAA Playoffs and Witter and fellow senior Damani Muldrow rallied their junior-heavy squad around the goal of proving that the Mustangs were indeed worthy of the SCT by proving that they were the best team that did not make the SCT field.

On Saturday, in front of their home crowd, Witter and his Brick Memorial teammates proved they were indeed an SCT-caliber team in winning the Shore Conference Coaches Cup with a come-from-behind, 48-41 win over Middletown South in the championship game.

“We’ve got tough kids and we’ve got a bunch of guys who are having fun now,” Brick Memorial first-year coach Keith Farr said. “At the beginning of the year, when were playing teams like St. Rose and Manasquan, our kids would get a little bit down and I just kept saying, ‘We’re going to be fine. Keep your confidence, keep enjoying playing with each other.’ And that’s what they are doing. The last month, their only loss is to St. Rose and they are having a blast.”

Witter scored 20 points to go with 10 rebounds and did half his scoring during a 15-0 fourth-quarter run by Brick Memorial that proved to be the difference.

“Once we got put in the Coaches Cup, we weren’t necessarily happy about it, but we all thought we had a chance to win it,” Witter said. “Let’s get what we can out of the season and win this tournament, at least, since we didn’t have a chance to play in the Shore Conference Tournament.”

Brick Memorial is on a 13-0 run and leads Middletown South 44-35 with 1:31 left. Joe Witter has 10 of the 13 points during the run. pic.twitter.com/HbNy5RaMKY

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 22, 2025

Middletown South stormed out to a 17-5 lead on Brick Memorial, but the Mustangs chipped away at the deficit and pulled even, 23-23, at halftime. Brick Memorial finally took its first lead in the midst of its 15-0 run, with Witter scoring on a drive to the basket to put the Mustangs in front, 36-35, with 4:50 left. Brick Memorial then scored nine more points without an answer from the Eagles, stretching its lead as high as 46-35.

“I was feeling confident at 17-5 because we missed a bunch of gimmes and I know the way our kids are: we are going to defend,” Farr said. “They had two points in the fourth quarter before they started making half-court shots, so there is never a point in any game that I think we are done because of the way we defend.”

Witter’s 10 points during the 15-0 Mustangs run would have led the team in scoring. Juniors Jason Lajara and  Sean Collins each scored nine points, with Lajara also contributing eight rebounds and four assists. Junior Nyzier Matthews also chipped in six points and eight rebounds for Brick Memorial.

Senior Brady Hahn led Middletown South with a game-high 25 points while grabbing seven rebounds, but the Brick Memorial defense — led by its seniors, Witter and Muldrow — quieted the Eagles’ supporting cast, with no other Middletown South player scoring more than six points.

“We really just upped everything on defense,” Witter said. “Our defense got way better at the end of the year, especially as a team. Our passing, I would say, got way better as a team. All-around, we just started playing way better as a team. The whole team is playing better and it shows.”

After falling behind 17-5, Brick Memorial has fought back to a 23-23 tie with Middletown South at halftime. Sean Collins with the tying jumper and Joe Witter with the block to end the half. pic.twitter.com/gVSn3MLDRD

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 22, 2025

Brick Memorial also dominated the glass throughout the game, which helped the Mustangs stay in the game in the early going, when Middletown South was finishing its possessions with points while Brick Memorial struggled to score. Middletown South’s rebounding struggles grew in the third quarter, when junior center Beckett Oliver had to be helped off the court after sustaining an injury and did not return.

“A big part of that is having point guards who can rebound,” Witter said. “Jason comes in and rebounds, Damani comes in and gets rebounds and that really helps. (Oliver) came out of the game and look what that does to their rebounding. If I come out of the game, we still have guys all over the boards.”

The effort on defense and on the boards reflected a Brick Memorial team that has persevered through various struggles during the 2024-25 season. The Mustangs rolled to a 7-2 start on the year, but then lost 10 games in a row — a stretch that included four losses to top-five teams in the Shore: two to No. 2 Manasquan and one each to No. 1 St. Rose and No. 4 Central Regional.

“We said at the beginning of the year that we are going to play our best basketball at the end of the year because we are getting battle-tested throughout the year,” Farr said. “We had non-divisional games against teams like Central and Matawan and Toms River North, so we knew that we were going to be battle-tested and play our best basketball at the end of the year, and we are.”

That 10-game losing streak also coincided with an injury-related absence for Lajara, the team’s point guard and the quarterback on Brick Memorial’s football team. Eleven of Brick Memorial’s 13 losses this season are to teams that made the Shore Conference Tournament and the two exceptions — losses to Neptune and Point Pleasant Boro — came with Lajara out of the lineup.

“We lost some games we felt like we should have won,” Farr said. “The difference with him on the court and him on the bench is huge. Three or four games he was out.”

Once Lajara returned and the scheduled eased up, Brick Memorial set out to turning its season around. Since dropping to 7-12, the Mustangs have won seven of eight games, including six in a row. The only loss over the last six games was Brick Memorial’s second meeting with SCT champion St. Rose and two of its wins were over Point Boro and Neptune — the two non-SCT teams that beat Brick Memorial during its losing streak. The win over Neptune was especially meaningful since it came in the Coaches Cup semifinals on Thursday night, with the Mustangs erasing a seven-point halftime deficit to beat the Scarlet Fliers on the road.

Even Saturday’s win came with its injury limitations, with junior Austin Braaten unable to play after leaving the semifinal win over Neptune Thursday due to injury.

Brick Memorial’s February turnaround was too little, too late as it pertained to qualifying for the Shore Conference Tournament. The win over Point Boro on Feb. 7 opened the door to the possibility that the Mustangs could sneak into the SCT as the No. 20 seed, but Brick Memorial needed several teams to lose that did not lose on the final days before the cutoff. Brick Memorial finished with the second-most power points of any team that missed the SCT, trailing only Freehold Township — the No. 1 seed in the Coaches Cup. Brick Memorial, however, was seeded third in the tournament due to a head-to-head loss to Neptune that prompted the Scarlet Fliers to be seeded ahead of the Mustangs since they finished with the third-most power points and were directly behind a team that they defeated during the regular season.

Middletown South defeated No. 4 Point Boro and No. 1 Freehold Township on the road in back-to-back rounds to reach the Coaches Cup final for the second straight year, but could not make it three straight road wins on Saturday and lost in the final for the second straight year. Middletown North defeated the Eagles in last year’s Coaches Cup final.

Both Brick Memorial and Middletown South brought junior-heavy rosters to the Coaches Cup final, but had seniors — Witter for Brick Memorial and Hahn for Middletown South — star in the championship game.

“Our seniors are the best,” Farr said. “Damani guards the best player on the opposing team every single game and Joe has been scoring the ball so well, but he has also been passing the ball really well and he is also averaging about 10 rebounds a game over the last month or so. The two of them have really been carrying us from a senior-leadership standpoint.”

Brick Memorial will now try to use its Coaches Cup championship as a springboard into the NJSIAA Tournament, which opens on Wednesday with Brick Memorial visiting Ewing in the first round of the Central Jersey Group III Playoffs.

If nothing else, Brick Memorial has laid the groundwork for its junior-led team to take the next step in 2025-26. After winning the 2024 Coaches Cup, Middletown North qualified for the Shore Conference Tournament in 2025 as the No. 11 seed and won a Class B Coastal division championship — a pair of accomplishments Farr and his team would like to reach next year.

“Damani and I enjoy the leadership role,” Witter said. “We tried pushing these guys — leave the talking out and just play your game because these guys are all very good players. They have another season together where they could be good. I think they have a chance to even compete with some of those bigger teams. They can compete with St. Rose next year, most likely, if they keep getting better. They have all been playing together since sixth grade so they have a chance to have a special year.”