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Four More Years: Linstra, Manasquan Win Fourth Sectional Title Together

Matt Manley|March 8, 2025|Last Updated March 9, 2025

MANASQUAN — From the day he stepped on a varsity basketball court as a freshman four years ago, Griffin Linstra has played an integral role on a Manasquan team in the midst of its greatest stretch of winning in the long history of a proud program.

With a chance to cement a legacy of winning as a four-time sectional champion Saturday against Rumson-Fair Haven in the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II championship, Linstra again left his fingerprints all over another championship win for his team.

Linstra scored 13 points, grabbed seven rebounds, handed out four assists and limited 6-foot-9 Rumson-Fair Haven junior and leading scorer Luke Cruz to eight points in a 48-36 Manasquan win over the Bulldogs that completes a fourth straight march to a sectional championship for Linstra and the sixth straight for the program dating back to the 2018-19 season.

“We have three guys outside of me with head-coaching experience on our staff and we have (assistant) Ryan Richey, who actually coaches the team, so that’s a big deal,” Manasquan coach Andrew Bilodeau said. “Then, we’ve got great players. The culture is really good. You have really good players from really great families. The consistency has been impressive.”

The Manasquan boys basketball team celebrates its sixth straight sectional title with the students. (Photo: Matt Manley) - Manasquan CJ2 Champs

The Manasquan boys basketball team celebrates its sixth straight sectional title with the students. (Photo: Matt Manley)

“I’m so blessed and fortunate to live in the greatest town on earth,” Linstra said. “I think Manasquan is one of the greatest communities. The whole community showed up for us, for the girls before us. That’s the way I wanted to go out (in this gym): the girls win their sectional championship and then we win ours. That was the same thing that happened my freshman year, so it was a surreal moment.”

Sophomore Rey Weinseimer scored a game-high 19 points to lead Manasquan in the scoring department and senior Brandon Kunz shined on the defensive end as well while also scored seven points for the Warriors.

Manasquan has now won its last nine meetings against Rumson, including each of the last two Central Jersey Group II championship games — both at Manasquan. After rallying from a seven-point deficit in the last two minutes to stun Rumson in last year’s final, the Warriors grabbed the lead in the latter half of the first quarter Saturday and never trailed again.

Led by the efforts of Linstra and Kunz, Manasquan dominated the game from the defensive end and seized control of Saturday’s championship game with a lockdown performance in the second quarter. Rumson scored on its first possession of the second quarter to pull within 10-8 and did not score again until the 6:30 mark of the third — a stretch of nearly nine minutes without a point.

“We can’t score, so we’ve gotta hold you,” Bilodeau said (partially) in jest. “I thought the defense was decent. We did a pretty good job. There were some mistakes there that I’m sure we’ll show them on the film. But overall, yeah, I thought the defense was really good and I thought we were pretty good on the glass.”

Weinseimer also heated up during the second quarter, scoring eight of Manasquan’s 13 unanswered points during the period. The sophomore faced a box-and-one defense by the Bulldogs and still managed to pour in 10 points before halftime, with Weinseimer knocking down a pair of three-pointers from the left side of the floor as part of his eight-point second. After his 19-point outing, Weinseimer is now averaging 20.25 points per game during the state tournament, including 25 per game over the last three rounds.

“They had a great game plan, they were in the finals for a reason,” Weinseimer said. “You’re not going to get any bad teams at this time of year. I think the big thing for use was just being aggressive and attacking and I think that opened stuff up for everybody.

“I think it’s our coaches doing what they do. All season long, they maintaining that we’ve got to run more, so when a team goes box-and-one like that, the best way to get open is don’t stop moving. I feel like I just kept moving and we have an offense for box-and-one so we’re ready for anything, really.”

Linstra’s defense on Cruz was particularly effective in the first half, during which Cruz went scoreless on 0-for-5 shooting from the field. The University of Pennsylvania commit bounced back with eight points in the second half and also contributed 10 rebounds and three blocked shots. During the first quarter, Cruz’s prowess protecting the rim made sure that Rumson’s halftime deficit was not even worse than it was by both blocking two Manasquan drives to the rim and changing several other shots in the paint with his presence.

“He’s a great player,” Linstra said of Cruz. “He is so skilled and big. I just tried to play really hard on him. My teammates did a great job helping. I think it was mostly them. I just had to stay in front of them and they just did a great job helping and finishing plays. He hit some tough shots, too.”

Kunz, meanwhile, took on the challenge of guarding Rumson senior point guard David Carr, who led the Bulldogs with 10 points, five assists and three steals on Saturday. The scoring total was only a half-point off Carr’s season average and eight of his points came in the fourth quarter. Kunz — a Lehigh commit in lacrosse — also made an impact on the offensive end, knocking down a pair of three-pointers. His first three-pointer opened the scoring in the first quarter and his second gave Manasquan its first points of the fourth quarter, which came after Carr hit a three on the first possession of the quarter to pull Rumson within 30-21.

“You look at our starting five, there are five kids who play two different sports,” said Linstra, who is also an All-Shore defender in soccer. “Three of them aren’t really basketball players first, but they compete for their school and they want to win for Manasquan. It’s a community full of winners and at the end of the day, winners win.”

Following an abysmal second quarter, Rumson showed its resilience by fighting back to make it a game in the third. Rumson opened the quarter on a 10-2 run to pull within 25-18 and broke down the floor in transition looking to pull even closer, but Linstra intercepted a pass at midcourt and found Weinseimer for a three that squeezed some of the air out of Rumson and gave Manasquan back a double-digit lead, 28-18.

Rumson again fought back to within 38-31 with 2:06 left in the fourth, but from there, Manasquan went 10-for-12 from the free-throw line to close out the victory.

“We didn’t give up,” Rumson coach Chris Champeau said. “We got it down to seven and had a breakaway and then they picked off and Rey banged a dagger three. For me, big-time players make big plays. The kid banged that three and it sort of chopped down the rally. We kept battling, though, so I’m proud of the guys. Disappointing, but a lot of teams would have gotten blown out down 23-8. We were in there fighting until the end.”

After squandering a 30-23 lead with two minutes to go in last year’s 36-30 loss to Manasquan in the Central Group II final, Rumson worked all summer and all season to get its playoff rematch with the Warriors. Throughout their journey, the Bulldogs played in big games that saw them struggle from beyond the three-point line — even in winning efforts.

Those perimeter struggles continued on Saturday, with Rumson shooting 4-for-20 (20 percent) from beyond the arc for the game, including 0-for-8 in the first half.

“We were getting looks,” Champeau said. “We weren’t making them, but I feel that one of the reasons that you don’t is the pressure and the great defense that they play. I don’t want to just make it about us. They played great D, the crown, the atmosphere — it’s a tough spot to be in.”

“They are so hard to play against because they shoot so many threes and if they are hitting them, it’s very hard to beat them,” Linstra said. “It was a great game. We were really excited to play them. That’s who we wanted to play in the state sectional final: you want to play the best team and we thought we did. It was a lot of fun. Those are great kids from great families too.”

Despite Rumson’s struggles from three-point range in the Shore Conference Tournament and its semifinal win over Holmdel, Manasquan still treated the Bulldogs like a team that was dangerous from beyond the arc because the Warriors saw it first-hand. In a December showdown with Manasquan in its home gym, Rumson hit eight first-half three-pointers — including six in the second quarter. Manasquan made a defensive adjustment in that game, went on to rally to force overtime and denied the Bulldogs a piece of revenge with a 57-55 road win in Rumson.

“We had to switch the matchups in the first game so we went with those matchups in tonight’s game,” Bilodeau said. “I thought Griff, did a super job. At one time, he was our no-catch guy. Now, he is just papa bear: he hangs in the lane and kind of directs traffic. Tonight, we needed him to guard their best player. I thought he did a good job of it.”

That defensive alteration back in December set the stage for the defensive game plan on Saturday, with Linstra shadowing Cruz. In the first meeting between the teams, Linstra was assigned as more of a help defender and after the three-point barrage buried Manasquan in a hole, Bilodeau made the change, putting Linstra on Cruz for the second half.

“We were trying to get Griffin in help situations so he could stop the drive and they were better than I thought,” Bilodeau said of the first half of the December game at Rumson. “They shot it. We have played a lot of good teams this year and I think they are one of the best couple teams we have played. I don’t think Shempy (Champeau) gets enough credit for the job he has done with that program from the time he took it over. They are always a nightmare.”

“(Bilodeau) asks us all the time about matchups,” Linstra said. “I think Jack O’Reilly did a pretty good job on him, but Luke Cruz is so versatile. Jack-O (O’Reilly) is a great helper and I think Jack-O played out of his mind tonight. It might not show up in the stats, but he is one of our best players and he is always the most impactful player on the floor.

“Coach makes the point to us all the time that it’s our program and he is just trying to make it the best one possible for us. The trust those coaches have in us is so awesome. It makes it so much fun.”

The use of Linstra vs. Cruz is another example of Linstra’s versatility and team-first approach during his four-years as a starter. As a freshman, Bilodeau considered him his top no-catch defender, which carried into his sophomore year, when he was the fourth-leading scorer on a team with UConn commit Darius Adams and First-Team All-Shore guard current Babson College freshman Ryan Frauenheim.

Last year, Adams transferred to national power La Lumiere and Frauenheim suffered a torn ACL in the summer prior to his senior season. That prompted Linstra to step up as both a primary ball-handler and scorer, which he did to the tune of 17.1 points per game for a Warriors team that went 23-7, won its fifth straight sectional title, reached the finals of the Shore Conference Tournament for the sixth straight year and were a botched decision by an officiating crew away from shocking Camden to reach the Group II final.

With the emergence of Weinseimer as a No. 1 scoring option this season, Linstra has morphed back into more of a facilitator on offense who serves as a second scoring option, which has given him a chance to take on more challenging defensive assignments when his team has needed him to. That hasn’t stopped him from piling up stats and in Manasquan’s semifinal win over Wall on Wednesday, Linstra recorded his 1,000th career rebound to go with more than 1,300 career points.

“Four years in a row is just unheard of to me,” Weinseimer said of his senior teammate, Linstra, after Weinseimer himself collected his second championship in his first two years of high school — both as a starter. “That’s ridiculous. It just goes to show how great he has been as a player and his legacy that he left here. This is his last home game and to go out with four in a row, there is no better way that we’d want him to go out.”

While Manasquan has technically won six consecutive sectional championships, that spans a stretch of seven seasons due to the cancelation of the 2021 tournament due to the COVID pandemic. Because of that interruption in the state tournament, no Manasquan player had an opportunity to win four straight sectional titles during that stretch. Between that lost opportunity for the players on the 2021 team and Adams leaving the program, Linstra became the lone Manasquan player during this six-year run of championships to be part of four sectional championship teams at the school.

“I feel like Griffin and I went to high school together, he has been here so long,” Bilodeau joked. “It is new for some of these guys though and it certainly is for some of the students. That’s what it’s about. It’s them having fun. It’s still a kids game. You don’t work basketball; you play basketball. It’s supposed to be fun, so this is great to see.”

Linstra was also happy to give several of the seniors who do not have his amount of varsity résumé a chance to experience winning a championship in front of a sold-out home crown, with two different raucous student sections on either side of the court.

“It was an awesome moment,” Linstra said of walking off the floor after being subbed out with the game in hand. “Looking at the student section, looking at some of my best friends on the bench. I was just really happy. I felt like a weight got lifted off my shoulders because I told some of those guys that we’d get a state championship together and I’m just so happy we did. Those kids are so deserving.”

Once Manasquan is finished celebrating its fourth straight year with a championship, the Warriors will turn their attention to a rematch that will be the focus of many around the state on Wednesday night at Monroe High School. A year after Camden defeated Manasquan after Linstra’s game-winning buzzer-beater was overturned despite video evidence proving it should have counted, the Warriors will have another chance to shock the state by taking down Camden. The Panthers overwhelmed Middle Township, 85-50, in the South Jersey Group II final and are reloaded with three new transfers after graduating two high-major Division I players from last year’s team.

“As I said last year: The most storied basketball program in the state of New Jersey,” Bilodeau said of Camden. “We’ll put our best foot forward and whatever God has in store, we’ll take it.”

“We want to raise the standard that our seniors don’t lose their last game ever,” Linstra said. “I think the last two years, we have kind of done that. It’s going to be fun. I think the whole state of New Jersey wants to see it, so it’s going to be fun.”

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