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Year of the Warrior: Linstra, Manasquan Get Their Revenge vs. Camden

Matt Manley|March 12, 2025|Last Updated March 13, 2025

MONROE TWP. — For less than a minute on the night of March 5, 2024, Griffin Linstra and his Manasquan teammates knew what it felt like to hit the game-winning shot to beat Camden in the NJSIAA Group II semifinals.

Once that minute was up, they spent the next year learning what it feels like to have one of the great upset wins in state history taken away.

On Wednesday night at Monroe High School, Linstra and his teammates ended a year of frustration and walked out of the gym with that winning feeling and this time, they didn’t have to give it back.

Linstra banked in the game-winning shot with 2.7 seconds left and Manasquan put an end to their year of anguish by vanquishing Camden, 44-43, to reach the Group II championship game for the second time in three years.

After burying last year’s loss and finally knocking off Camden, Manasquan will march to the Group II final at Rutgers University on Sunday, when the Warriors will face Madison for the championship at 2 p.m.

“It’s surreal,” Linstra said. “I still don’t think it’s real. I’m just so happy I got it for these seniors. I love every single one of these guys. These are 10 guys who are some of my best friends. Six of them, I have grown up with, so I just want to keep this rolling.”

A little over a year ago, Manasquan had a Camden squad with two high-major Division I seniors on the ropes for three quarters, only for the Panthers to outscored Manasquan, 14-0, during the first 7:55 of the fourth quarter to take a one-point lead in the final seconds. On the game’s final play, Linstra rebounded a miss by then freshman Rey Weinseimer and put up the follow-up before the buzzer sounded. The ball dropped in, the official signaled the basket was good and Manasquan celebrated a shocking win over a team that had not lost to a New Jersey public school since March of 2019.

A minute later, after conferring with one another on the court, the officials ruled Linstra’s shot did not count and Camden won the game. Multiple videos of Linstra’s shot confirmed he indeed released the ball before time expired, prompting the NJSIAA to apologize to Manasquan for the error, but not to overturn the outcome. The Manasquan Board of Education filed a lawsuit seeking to postpone the Group II championship game and to ultimately overturn the ruling to award Manasquan the victory.

“I think it’s always there,” Linstra said of the loss to end last season. “I think we really wanted to do it for our alumni — those seven seniors who fought so hard for that moment. I just FaceTimed all of them in the locker room and seeing their faces just really made the moment surreal to me.”

Linstra and his teammates, however, did not participate in the legal fallout or the debates on social media. They attended the Group II championship games at Rutgers University to cheer on their girls basketball team as they won their seventh state title in 12 years and applauded Camden when the Panthers defeated Arts High School of Newark in the boys final.

Then, it was time to get to work.

“It definitely helped (motivate us),” Linstra said. “We worked really hard this offseason and all year long.”

“I said it a bunch of times last year: I think the real victims last year were the Camden players, not ours,” Manasquan head coach Andrew Bilodeau said. “They went on to win a group championship and they had to hear that crap, and that’s not fair. They won that game, end of story. That’s the best program in the history of New Jersey high school basketball, and those kids didn’t deserve that. I said that a lot last year and I’m pretty damn well tired of talking about that.”

Linstra and Bilodeau downplayed the significance of meeting — and, ultimately, beating — Camden a year after the erroneous officiating decision cost Manasquan a win for the ages. But their reactions immediately after the final buzzer told the story of a group that threw a weight they have been carrying for a full year off its collective shoulders. Linstra and teammate Brandon Kunz gestured and waved toward the Camden fan section, asserting that this time, there was no last-second referee decision to bail out the Panthers.

Bilodeau, meanwhile, turned to Manasquan’s massive following at Monroe High School and, in a rare expression of jubilation, pumped his fist.

“In one of the latter timeouts, I looked past the kids and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake, the whole town’s here,'” Bilodeau said. “There are probably some robberies going on in Manasquan right now. But in one timeout, I told the kids, ‘Look at this. They didn’t come here to watch Camden win.'”

For the second straight year against Camden in the Group II semifinals, Manasquan led for the vast majority of the night. The Warriors led by as many as eight points in the third quarter and never trailed by more than two.

Camden’s defense, however, shut Manasquan down in the fourth quarter, holding the Warriors to three points up until the final Manasquan possession. With the Panthers defense clicking, the offense clawed away and finally took the first lead of the second half when senior Emmanuel Joe-Samuel hit a go-ahead three from the right wing to put Camden ahead, 43-42, with 1:25 left. The Panthers then forced a quick Manasquan turnover for the fourth straight possession, and the Warriors found themselves in a difficult situation, trailing by one with just over a minute to go.

Eventually, Manasquan fouled 6-foot-8 Camden senior and Neptune native David Munro with 43.1 seconds left. Munro missed both free throws to give Manasquan new life.

Linstra nearly tied the game with 25 seconds left, but his reverse rimmed out. Manasquan, however, preserved the possession by forcing a jump ball with the possession arrow in its favor.

Manasquan took two timeouts during the final possession and the last of them came with 6.1 seconds left. Senior Brandon Kunz inbounded the ball to Linstra on the left side of the floor, where the senior dribbled his way into the lane, drew a foul on a pull-up jumper and banked it in for the go-ahead score with 2.7 seconds left.

Bilodeau called a timeout just before Linstra shot his ensuing free throw. When the teams walked back on the floor, Manasquan cleared the free-throw line and put all its players in the frontcourt, preparing to guard Camden’s last-ditch effort. Linstra missed the free throw and Joe-Samuel heaved up a shot at the buzzer that missed the mark and set off a celebration one year in the making.

“These moments are what you play for,” Linstra said. “Before the game, I was just trying to enjoy the moment, and I was just really happy. I think we were ready for the moment and I think luck favors the prepared, and I think that was us today.

“Our culture really carried us. The atmosphere that was behind us — I remember looking back at all the Manasquan people on the left side of the court and it was just mobbed. It’s just the Manasquan way. It’s the best town on Earth, and I’m so happy to be a part of it.”

Linstra finished with eight points, seven rebounds and three assists, numbers that don’t do justice to the impact he had on Manasquan’s win over Camden — both on Wednesday night and in leading the Warriors over the last year after their 2023-24 season ended in heartbreak.

Just as Alex Konov stepped up with 23 points on seven three-pointers in last year’s near-upset of Camden, Manasquan got another huge performance from a source who likely was not at the top of Camden’s scouting report. Sophomore Logan Cleveland scored a team-high 14 points while pulling in five rebounds and battling Munro in the paint with junior Jack O’Reilly saddled with foul trouble.

“It’s such an exciting moment,” Cleveland said. “We have worked so hard all year to get to this moment.”

The 6-5 sophomore went 4-for-5 from the field and 4-for-4 from the free-throw line — his only miss a three-point attempt.

“He shone bright when it was needed,” Bilodeau said. “He did a super job on the glass at both ends, handled the ball a little bit for us. He had a heck of an assignment with (Munro) in there. What a player.”

“Logan Cleveland stepped up so much today,” Linstra said. “He is going to be one of the best players in Manasquan history.”

Weinseimer also scored 14 points to help lead the Warriors offense. The sophomore scored the first basket of the game when he followed his own miss of a three-point attempt with a rebound and layup. After that score, Weinseimer missed his next eight shots before heading to the halftime locker room 1-for-10 from the field.

In the third quarter, however, Weinseimer caught fire, scoring 12 of his 14 points and hitting a pair of three-pointers on consecutive possessions that gave Manasquan a 29-23 lead. When Cleveland knocked down a midrange shot after another Camden miss, Manasquan had its largest lead, 31-23.

Camden’s ill fate began before the game, when the Panthers learned junior guard Torrey Brooks Jr. would be unable to play due to injury. Sitafa Hall stepped in to score 12 points in his place, including a three-pointer at the halftime buzzer to send the teams into the locker room tied, 21-21.

“Shocked,” Bilodeau said of Brooks’s absence. “(Hall) played really well. (Joe-Samuel) is a nightmare. Crafty, crafty player. But it’s the big kid (Munro) for them. He is a joke inside with how big and strong he is inside. Our guys aren’t impressed by too many people, and they were coming over to the bench and saying things like, ‘I shoved that sucker and he didn’t move.'”

With Brooks out of the picture, Camden leaned on Munro as the focal point of its offense. The senior forward — who played his first two seasons at Bergen Catholic and his junior year close to home at College Achieve of Asbury Park — scored 10 of Camden’s 12 points in the first quarter and finished with 16 points and eight rebounds.

In the fourth quarter, however, Manasquan kept Camden’s big man off the board. Joe-Samuel — the lone starter back for Camden from a year ago — finished with 10 points and six rebounds, including the go-ahead three that gave Camden its final lead of the game.

“I don’t know if we could score 60 points if you left us in the gym alone for an hour,” Bilodeau joked. “But we’ll guard you. We’ll guard you like hell and we’ll rebound. I think culture and toughness — and these guys are as good as any team we have had in the classroom.”

Sunday’s Group II championship will be the final game in the four-year varsity career of Linstra, who came off the bench in his first varsity game as a freshman and started every one since.

“He has done everything we have asked of him, and he is a great leader,” Bilodeau said. “He is an example for all the other kids in the program of what it means to be a student-athlete. Unfortunately, we only have one more game with that kid. He is as good as we’ve had: 1,000-point, 1,000-rebound guy, unbelievable leader, and the steward of the culture of Manasquan basketball.”

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