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Purple Pain: Roselle Catholic Stuns St. Rose with Last-Minute Circus Shot

Matt Manley|March 14, 2025|Last Updated March 14, 2025

PISCATAWAY — Since the NJSIAA Tournament started, the St. Rose boys basketball team got used to emptying its bench for the last two minutes of the game. The Purple Roses defeated their first three opponents of the Non-Public B Playoffs by an average of 32 points.

For the first 31 minutes of Friday’s Non-Public B championship game, the Purple Roses never trailed, but were also never comfortable against a team that has been through as many battles vs. high-level opponents as any team in the state. In the final minute, Roselle Catholic found their big-game form and denied St. Rose a repeat championship.

Junior Trevon Lewis hit an off-balance shot as he was fouled with 27 seconds left to give Roselle Catholic its first lead of the game and the Lions rallied to upend the defending champion Purple Roses, 55-51, giving them their seventh Non-Public B title in the last 13 years.

“I’ve got to give them credit,” St. Rose coach Brian Lynch said. “They were fantastic down the stretch. They were super aggressive defensively with everything that they threw at us. We fought. It’s not like we didn’t give a great effort. Our guys left it all out on the floor.”

While St. Rose did not trail until the final 30 seconds, the Purple Roses also did not lead by more than six points in the second half. They led by as many as 10 in the first half, but a jumper by Lewis and a putback by junior Kahlik Thomas trimmed the deficit to 31-25 by halftime.

Senior Evan Romano knocked down a three-pointer on St. Rose’s second possession of the fourth quarter to stretch St. Rose’s lead to 45-39, but Thomas answered with a three to cut the deficit in half. Junior Jayden Hodge scored off a feed from sophomore Avery Lynch to put the Roses ahead, 47-42, with 5:30 left, but junior point guard Jalen Grant responded with a three-point play to nudge Roselle Catholic to within 47-45.

As it did throughout the game, when Roselle Catholic would threaten to pull in front, St. Rose responded with stops and a big basket. Romano and senior Bryan Ebeling combined to force a turnover and Romano found Avery Lynch for a layup and a 49-45 lead. Lewis responded with a midrange jumper to make it 49-47 and Romano came back with a jump hook off a pass from Ebeling for a 51-47 St. Rose edge.

Lewis then buried a three from the top of the key to cut the St. Rose lead to one for the first time since the fourth quarter opened with the Purple Roses ahead, 40-39. Thomas then came up with a steal for Roselle Catholic, but Grant missed a pull-up three that would have tied the game had it hit its mark.

“We there to win this,” Lynch said. “We thought it was right there in our hands and we just couldn’t finish it off. We told our guys to be aggressive at the end — not to hold, but to attack.”

St. Rose worked more than a minute off the clock before Roselle Catholic made the game-changing play. Junior Tyrease Hunter knocked the ball away from Romano and Thomas picked it up heading toward the opposite end. Thomas missed another potential game-tying layup, but Lewis pulled in the rebound, absorbed the contact and hit a wild shot as he fell to the ground. When it dropped in the hoop, the Lions had their first lead of the game, 52-51, with 27.7 seconds left.

“I wasn’t going to stop until I scored,” Lewis said. “However many shots it took, rebounds, anything it took, I was making sure we scored. We were fighting the whole game and we knew we were going to get it if we stayed together and kept fighting.”

“They made some incredibly tough shots,” Lynch said. “One of them is a fall-away from seven feet on the baseline, which is one of the hardest shots in basketball. You tip your hat when someone makes a play like that. If our guys are hanging all over him and he makes that shot, there is nothing we can do except play the next play and try to get it back.”

Lewis knocked down the free throw and, after a St. Rose timeout, Roselle Catholic forced the 11th St. Rose turnover of the second half and 18th of the game to get the ball back. Grant hit two free throws to give Roselle Catholic a 55-51 lead with 13 seconds left and the clock ran out on the Purple Roses.

“They pressured us and made it difficult for us,” Lynch said. “Playing on a bigger court, in a bigger gym, with a lot of people and a lot of sound, we couldn’t hear the play calls. Sometimes guys were running something while other guys were running something else. We talked about that at halftime to try to clean up our execution to make it a little easier on us. I thought we did a good job defensively, but we weren’t really as smooth offensively.”

Roselle Catholic shot just 9-for-19 from the free-throw line, but hit its final three attempts to close the game.

Hodge led all scorers with 23 points to go with 12 rebounds and three steals, while Romano poured in 16 points while dishing out three assists. Hodge put up 15 points and seven rebounds in the first half and opened the third quarter by skying for a fastbreak dunk.

“Every time we step on the floor, I know we have the best player on the court,” Lynch said of Hodge. “He gave us a chance to win tonight.”

Lewis led Roselle Catholic with 21 points and six rebounds, with Grant kicking in 12.

“I thought their role players really stepped up for them,” Lynch said. “(Thomas) and (Caldwell) I thought made some big plays, some offensive rebounds and putbacks just to keep some of their possessions alive. Diving for loose balls on the floor. I felt those two kids, although their roles aren’t as big as the other guys, made timely plays that hurt us.”

St. Rose entered the game with two potential advantages and while it took advantage of one, the other went the way of Roselle Catholic. The Purple Roses played three players off the bench against a Lions team that routinely limits its rotation to six. Despite the deeper rotation, Roselle Catholic sixth man Isaiah Headley-Smith outscored the St. Rose bench, 5-0.

The Purple Roses won the rebounding battle, 35-26, and the offensive rebounding edge, 13-10, against a Lions team that does not play anyone taller than 6-foot-5. The makeup of Roselle Catholic’s lineup mirrors that of St. Rose in that regard, with Hodge and sophomore Avery Lynch the tallest St. Rose players at 6-5.

Roselle Catholic has undergone a makeover in the last two years. The Lions beat St. Rose in the 2023 Non-Public B championship, which was the last game for coach Dave Boff as the head coach before taking the head coaching job at College Achieve in Asbury Park. Todd Decker took over with a young roster last season and Roselle Catholic went 14-12 with a season-ending loss to Morris Catholic in the North Jersey Non-Public B semifinal.

With a rotation of five juniors along with senior Armagh Caldwell, Roselle Catholic returned to its championship form this season. Monday marked the 17th game the Lions played against a team ranked in the NJ.com Top 20 in the state and Roselle Catholic finished 12-5 in those games.

Grant is the only current Roselle Catholic player to get important minutes on the 2022-23 state championship team and was the only one of the Lions’ talented scoring trio from 2023-24 to return this season. Eric Hillsman transferred to College Achieve and Ethan Mgbako left for Oak Hill Academy in Virginia.

To round out the new starting lineup, Hunter, Thomas and Caldwell emerged as standouts after playing smaller roles last season, but the biggest difference between last year and this year’s championship season was Lewis. The 6-3 junior transferred from Cardinal Hayes in the Bronx and wound up leading Roselle Catholic by averaging better than 18 points per game — including 39 in a payback win over Morris Catholic in this year’s North Non-Public B semifinal.

“I came from New York to win,” Lewis said. “I wanted to win a championship and as soon as I got together with these guys, I knew we had something special. We get along great away from the court and that’s made us closer on the court.”

While Friday marked the return of Roselle Catholic to prominence, it also marked the end of St. Rose’s pursuit of history. The Purple Roses had a chance to join Roselle Catholic, St. Patrick’s and since-closed St. Anthony as the only teams to win back-to-back overall state titles in Non-Public B since the 1979-80 season.

In falling one win short, however, St. Rose continued its rise to the top tier of programs in the state by reaching a Non-Public B final for the third straight season. On either end of last year’s state-final rout of Immaculate Conception of Montclair, St. Rose lost two competitive games to Roselle Catholic —  the most decorated program in the state over the past decade-plus. St. Rose’s three straight state final appearances marked the second time in school history that its boys basketball team reached three straight state final, which the Purple Roses had not done since 1947 through 1949.

“You can’t be disappointed in our guys,” Lynch said. “They showed up. For the last month, every single day, they showed up with a great attitude, prepared themselves for everything. It just wasn’t good enough today.”

While Roselle Catholic is set to return five of its top six players as seniors, St. Rose is poised to bring back an experienced group in 2025-26 as well, led by Hodge. In addition to the four-star guard, St. Rose is due to return Lynch, current juniors Tyler Cameron and Orien Campbell and current freshmen Izayah Cooper and Oymere Rene — all of whom saw the court on Friday.

“When I started (as head coach) four years ago, I never expected to be here three years in a row,” Lynch said. “It’s an honor and a privilege to be here to compete for a state championship. It’s hard to feel like a failure when you lose this game, but it certainly stings when you get this far and get so close.”

Romano and Ebeling, meanwhile, graduate having participated in three state finals during their three seasons at St. Rose, including one state championship in 2023-24. Both seniors were also part of back-to-back Shore Conference Tournament championships in 2023-24 and 2024-25.

“Evan really stepped up in his senior year, and I thought Bryan did as well,” Lynch said. “I thought tonight Evan, in particular, shined a little bit. His ability to create offense and get other guys going helped us and he is really scrappy on defense and the boards, so I’m really proud of the way he played and the way Bryan played.”

 

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