Manasquan Boys Basketball Wins Championship Rematch in Rumson

RUMSON — Griffin Linstra played in more big games before his senior year than than most high-school basketball players play in their entire careers, but Saturday marked his first experience in Rumson-Fair Haven’s gym.

It was not, however, his first experience with Rumson-Fair Haven’s boys basketball team, nor was it the first time facing Linstra for several of the current Rumson players.

The setting was different on Saturday, but just as they did in March with an NJSIAA sectional championship on the line, Manasquan and Rumson played a classic game, with Linstra coming through late to deliver the Warriors a win.

Linstra scored seven of his game-high 20 points in overtime, grabbed 11 rebounds and handed out seven assists to deny the host Bulldogs revenge Saturday in a 57-55 win for Manasquan in overtime.

“My shots didn’t really go down in the first quarter, but I just kept trying to make a basketball play,” Linstra said. “I have seen so much and have been very fortunate to play for these four years, so I think I have seen so much that, for me, I just make the right play most of the time and the guys around me are good players who play hard and have all learned quickly.”

A year ago, Manasquan won a memorable installment of their rivalry with Rumson by erasing a seven-point deficit in the final two minutes to beat the Bulldogs, 36-32, and claim an NJSIAA sectional championship for the sixth straight season. Saturday’s win extends Manasquan’s winning streak over Rumson to eight games, with the Bulldogs last beating Manasquan in the 2017-18 regular season.

“We have ten seniors on the team and they are bought-in on the program and everything we’ve been about,” Bilodeau said. “That emotional maturity lends itself to weathering the storm.”

During the early going of Saturday’s game, Rumson against started fast and appeared poised to seize its chance at revenge. Manasquan trailed, 28-21, at halftime thanks to 8-for-14 shooting by Rumson from beyond the three-point line.

“This was my first time in this gym. It was nuts,” Linstra said. “They get their crowd going, they are hitting shots early, getting fired up. It makes it fun, you just have to be able to respond.”

In the second half, Manasquan adjusted and rallied. The Warriors held the Bulldogs to 0-for-10 from beyond the arc in the third and fourth quarters and surged to a 40-36 lead before Rumson closed the third quarter with an old-fashioned three-point play converted by senior Carson Memmott to make it 40-39 heading to the fourth.

“We had some match-ups that I got wrong, so we fixed those,” Bilodeau said. “We stayed on shooters a little bit better in the second half, plus, the match-up changes.”

“They are definitely different than every team we play,” Linstra said. “You play Rumson, it’s always going to be a war. They are similar to us: they’ve got great kids who come from great families and they play really hard, so it’s good to get a shot at them.”

After Manasquan went up, 44-39, Rumson clawed back behind Memmott, who scored nine of his 15 points in the second half — including a drive that tied the game at 47-47 and another layup that gave Rumson a 49-47 lead with 1:10 left.

Manasquan responded to Memmott’s go-ahead layup with a game-tying pick-and-roll executed by Linstra and Logan Cleveland, with Linstra finding the 6-foot-5 sophomore for the tying layup, plus the foul, with 34.3 seconds left. Linstra then hauled in the offensive rebound on Cleveland’s free-throw miss to give Manasquan the final shot of regulation, which the Warriors could not convert.

Linstra opened overtime with a three-pointer from the top of the key before Rumson junior Luke Cruz answered with his fourth three of the game to tie it and snap a string of 12 straight misses from three-point range by the Bulldogs.

On the other end, Linstra earned three trips to the foul line in one possession thanks to offensive rebounds by junior Jack O’Reilly and Cleveland, with Linstra going 1-for-2 on each of his first two trips, then hitting a pair to make it 56-52 with 34.8 seconds left. Sophomore Rey Weinseimer hit the first of two free throws to push Manasquan’s lead to 57-52 and senior David Carr hit a long with 0.6 seconds left to pull Rumson within 57-55. After both teams used a timeout, Manasquan successfully inbounded the ball to drain the remainder of the clock.

Manasquan owned the boards in the second half and overtime, with the Warriors four scorers also leading the rebounding effort. Weinseimer poured in 19 points to go with six rebounds, Cleveland went for 10 points and five rebounds, and O’Reilly finished with eight points and eight boards.

“Jack-O and Logan, for sure, just really hunt the glass,” Bilodeau said. “They hit it hard. They did a heck of a job.”

“Jack O’Reilly, Logan Cleveland, Brandon, Rey, Matteo (Chiarella) — we all just play so hard,” Linstra said. “We’re all so bought into what we do, so I feel like the toughness those kids have, plus our athletic ability, we’re going to the glass every time.”

Cruz finished with 20 points, eight rebounds and two blocked shots to lead Rumson, which lost two players — senior starter Riley Gill and senior bench guard Nic Economou — to foul-outs before the three-minute mark of the fourth quarter. Gill fouled out with 6:07 to play in the fourth.

Rumson’s foul trouble helped Manasquan turn the tide late in the second quarter, with senior David Carr picking up his third foul with 3:10 left in the half and Rumson ahead, 25-15. The score was the same at 2:35, when Gill picked up his third foul. Carr finished with nine points and six assists.

Gill also fouled out in last year’s Central Group II final at Manasquan, which served as a turning point in that game at the four-minute mark of the fourth quarter. Gill’s size has been enough to bother Linstra and other top scorers, but Linstra and his teammates have at least managed to rack up the fouls against Gill in each of the last two meetings.

“Griffin probably missed six layups in the first half,” Bilodeau said. “All the little kids sitting there and the freshman guys and the jayvee guys that dream of being Griffin Linstra — a lot comes with that. Their best defender, their gameplan, every emphasis on what you’re doing.”

Rumson’s largest lead of the first half was 25-12, which the Bulldogs took thanks to a three-pointer by Gill — the fourth of their five straight made threes.

The down-to-the-wire drama Saturday was in line with Manasquan’s early-season, white-knuckle finishes to start 2024-25. The Warriors beat Rutgers Prep, 64-61 in their season-opener on Dec. 14, which ended on a banked three-pointer from beyond midcourt by senior Matteo Chiarella to win the game. Two nights later, Manasquan let a 12-point fourth-quarter lead slip away in a 50-45 loss to No. 1 St. Rose.

“We knew three of the better teams we play this year would be these first three games,” Bilodeau said. “We have a really tough schedule, but three crammed together to start. No one has ever accused me of being too bright, but I’m proud of them for being 2-1.”

“I don’t like playing in blowouts,” Linstra said. “I’ve been so fortunate to play in so many games like this and these are awesome. These are the games you play for.”

Manasquan has picked up where they left off at the end of last year, when its season ended with a finish that was as controversial as it was thrilling. After losing to Camden in the Group II semifinal on an incorrect call by the officials — who failed to count a game-winning shot by Linstra that he released before the final buzzer after they initially counted it — Manasquan has played three close games against teams that expect to be playing well into March with a group that is not wanting for motivation.

“You hear a lot of the noise and that drives you, especially with the way last season ended,” Linstra said. “We have a lot of kids that worked really hard. Me and Rey are in the gym constantly. Last year, it was me and Ryan Fraeunheim. We have kids who love to be in the gym. It would be the same for us no matter how last year ended. We’re just so focused on the standard of our program and trying to raise it every year.”