NJSIAA Central Group II Championship Preview: Manasquan, Rumson Clash Again

NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II Championship

Saturday, March 8, 2025

No. 2 Rumson-Fair Haven at No. 1 Manasquan, 4 p.m.

Teams at a Glance

Rumson-Fair Haven (20-6)

Head Coach: Chris Champeau
Last Sectional Championship: 2022
Last Sectional Final Appearance: 2024
Road to the Final: Defeated No. 15 Raritan, 84-43; No. 7 Metuchen, 66-41; No. 3 Holmdel, 54-48

Projected Starters

Luke Cruz, Jr., 6-9 (17.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 2.4 blocks, 1.6 steals)

David Carr, Sr., 6-2 (10.5 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.3 steals)

Carson Memmott, Sr., 6-4 (7.8 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.1 assists)

Riley Gill, Sr., 6-3 (5.8 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.2 assists)

Luke Lydon, Jr., 6-1 (7.6 points, 1.8 rebounds, 1.3 assists)

Off the Bench

Drew Cavise, Jr., 6-3 (4.9 points, 1.7 rebounds)

Nic Economou, Sr., 6-2 (4.2 points, 2.4 rebounds, 1.4 assists)

Charlie Butters, Sr., 6-3

For the past year, Rumson’s players have been counting down the days until March 8 and doing their best to focus on the task at hand as their work to get back to the Central Jersey Group II final. A year ago, the Bulldogs had Manasquan down, 30-23, with two minutes to go in the fourth quarter, only for the Warriors to rally with a 13-0 run to close the game and win a fifth consecutive sectional championship in front of a raucous home crowd.

Rumson had a chance to exact a measure of revenge in December, when the Bulldogs hosted Manasquan in an early-season game, but Manasquan denied Rumson again with a 57-55 win in overtime. Needless to say, the Bulldogs are as hungry as ever for a win over Manasquan, especially considering Manasquan has won the last eight meetings between the teams.

Since Rumson last beat Manasquan in 2017-18, Manasquan has been the class of the Shore Conference and five of the eight wins by Manasquan during its current winning streak vs. Rumson are by at least 10 points. From the 2019-20 season to 2022-23, Manasquan was 4-0 vs. Rumson with an average margin of victory of 25 points.

Since then, Rumson has closed the gap between the two rosters and have been on the doorstep of victory in each of the last two matchups. While Manasquan is one of the top rebounding teams in the Shore Conference, Rumson can counter with a size advantage thanks to 6-foot-9 junior Luke Cruz, was well as 6-4 senior Carson Memmott and strong, athletic guards in David Carr, Riley Gill and junior Luke Lydon. The Bulldogs can match up with most teams athletically and Manasquan is not an exception.

Rumson is seeking its fourth sectional championship in the last eight contested tournaments and for the Bulldogs to find a way past the Warriors and two the trophy photo, they will have to do more than just outwork Manasquan – which in and of itself is hard to do. In many of its high-profile games this season, Rumson has struggled with its perimeter shooting and in the sectional semifinal Wednesday vs. Holmdel, the Bulldogs started 1-for-10 from three-point range, but wore down Holmdel on the offensive glass and knocked down a pair of key three-pointers – one by junior Drew Cavise and the other by Gill – that helped put away the Hornets.

Rumson does not have to shoot lights-out to beat Manasquan, but the Bulldogs will look to make sure the three-point looks are high-quality and that they are working for higher-percentage looks near the basket. If, however, Rumson catches fire from long range, Manasquan will have trouble keeping up.

Rumson’s last sectional title came in 2022, when Manasquan won the Central Group III title with a team dominated by underclassmen. If an eight-game losing streak and last year’s championship loss weren’t motivation enough, Rumson would like to win its fourth sectional title since 2017 by going through the team that has captured a sectional title at the Bulldogs’ expense three times in the past five years.

Manasquan (22-4)

Head Coach: Andrew Bilodeau
Last Sectional Championship: 2024
Last Sectional Final Appearance: 2024
Road to the Final: Defeated No. 16 Ocean, 46-16; No. 9 Robbinsville, 72-43; No. 5 Wall, 53-36

Projected Starters

Griffin Linstra, Sr., 6-4 (15.1 points, 9.2 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 1.3 steals)

Rey Weinseimer, So., 6-1 (17.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.7 steals)

Jack O’Reilly, Jr., 6-4 (4.8 points, 6.7 rebounds)

Logan Cleveland, So., 6-5 (6.9 points, 4.3 rebounds)

Brandon Kunz, Sr., 6-1 (3.5 points, 1.7 rebounds, 1.6 assists)

Off the Bench

Matteo Chiarella, Sr., 6-1

Dan McManus, Sr., 6-0

While Rumson-Fair Haven is trying to break through and beat Manasquan for the first time since 2018 and the first time in the postseason since 2017, the Warriors are looking to keep their incredible championship run going. Manasquan has won a sectional title in every season they have been awarded since 2018-19 and in the season in which there were no sectional finals due to the COVID pandemic, the Warriors went 12-0 and might have had their best team of this current run.

As the Warriors get set to challenge for their sixth straight sectional title, they are preparing to face an opponent that has come dangerously close to knocking off Manasquan in each of the last two times the teams met. Before Darius Adams transferred to La Lumiere and Ryan Frauenheim injured his knee before his senior season, Manasquan was comfortably better than Rumson and did not have to sweat out its victories over the Bulldogs.

In last year’s sectional final and this year’s regular-season showdown, it was a different story. Manasquan’s execution down the stretch and its embrace of the chaos that defines the final minutes of a close game between high-caliber teams was the difference in beating the Bulldogs in each of the last two meetings.

That late-game magic has defined this Manasquan team as much as any other. After the Warriors were robbed of one of those magic moments in last year’s Group II semifinal vs. Camden, they have been even better in the clutch this season. In addition to rallying from a double-digit deficit to beat Rumson in overtime, Manasquan beat both Rutgers Prep and Central Regional at the buzzer and won a down-to-the-wire game vs. Christian Brothers Academy at the Hoop Group Boardwalk Classic.

More recently, Manasquan has not been letting opponents hang around. Outside of a loss to St. Rose in the Shore Conference Tournament semifinals, the Warriors have won their last five games by an average margin of 26 points, including a 30-point win over Central Jersey Group III champion Colts Neck.

Manasquan’s strengths are its defense and rebounding and it is a five-man operation in both areas. Senior Griffin Linstra and junior Jack O’Reilly rule the glass for the Warriors, with 6-5 sophomore Logan Cleveland also a factor on the boards, which was an advantage Manasquan had in the regular-season win earlier this season.

On defense, Linstra and fellow senior guard Brandon Kunz are the top man-to-man defenders on a team that has a roster full of players who embrace the need to defend.

Linstra has remained a steady force as the point man of the offense, while Weinseimer has enjoyed a breakout sophomore seasons as one of the best true scorers in the Shore Conference. Those two typically shoulder most of the scoring, but Cleveland has had his moments and Kunz can get going from beyond the three-point arc.

The elephant in the room for Manasquan is that it is one win away from likely earning a rematch with Camden in the Group II semifinal. The Panthers lost two high-major recruits from last year’s team to graduation, but brought in three impact transfers to replace them. Manasquan, meanwhile, graduated two senior starters and replaced them with two players who came off the bench a year ago.

The Match-Up

For Rumson to win, the Bulldogs will either have to have an above-average shooting night from deep or win the battle for the interior. The latter is hard to do vs. Manasquan in any gym, but at Manasquan in a sectional final is a major challenge. It is also a challenge Rumson should be capable of meeting, given how much size and athleticism the Bulldogs have across the board.

They also have a potential matchup headache for Manasquan in Cruz, who will likely see a variety of defensive looks on Saturday evening. Manasquan is not afraid to try unique defensive looks, including box-and-one or triangle-and-two, when there is a scary enough scoring threat on the other side.

In the first meeting, Rumson was connecting from the outside in the first half in building a double-digit lead, but Manasquan’s defense clamped down on Cruz and the shooters down the stretch in rallying to win. While Rumson has struggled shooting the ball during the postseason, Manasquan has seen up-close what Rumson looks like when the shots are dropping and that is not something the Warriors would like to see happen.

As good as Rumson is athletically and as much as the Bulldogs are equipped to match-up favorably with Manasquan, the game is going to come down to Rumson handling the pressure of closing out Manasquan on the road. The Bulldogs had a chance to do it last year and fell apart as the home team fed off the crowd and the desperation of the moment. The feeling of coming so close to a championship and watching Manasquan celebrate has been sitting with Rumson for the last year and now, the Bulldogs finally have a chance to do something about it.

If Rumson can get out to an early lead, its best chance is to keep the foot on the gas and win by several scores. If the game comes down to a possession, Manasquan has proven time and time again it will find a way. It’s hard to see either team running away in this game, which means the likelihood of a one-score or two-score game is likely high.

The Pick: Manasquan, 41-40