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03/17 - 2:00 PM Boys Basketball Final Bergen Catholic 63 Ranney 67
Down nine at the half, trying to recover from a monstrous alley-oop wasn't the way that the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions was supposed to go for Ranney, No. 1 in the NJ.com Top 20.
The past four years, all Ranney’s boys basketball team heard about was how 2019 was going to be their year.
But here it was, sitting in a locker room trailing No. 2 Bergen Catholic at halftime of the TOC final.
As a team, Ranney needed to step up and that task fell on the shoulders of McDonald’s All-Americans Bryan Antoine and Scottie Lewis.
That was nothing new for the seniors.
They’ve been doing it their entire careers at the Shore Conference school.
The dynamic duo answered the call one final time. They cemented their status as legends and led Ranney to its first-ever Tournament of Champions title in a 67-63 win over Bergen Catholic on Sunday at Rutgers University.
"We knew the intensity of the game and what it meant to us to win it," Lewis said. "I think we all individually did what we were supposed to do to win the game."
For Lewis and Antoine that meant scoring and lots of it.
Lewis poured in a game-high 20 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, while Antoine scored 17 points.
The two were not at it alone.
Junior forward Phillip Wheeler scored 14 points and senior guard Ahmadu Sarnor had 14 points - including the game-winning free throws.
Both Wheeler and Sarnor weren't eligible when Ranney defeated Bergen Catholic on Jan. 12.
"There's a reason why we were excited to have these guys back in the lineup after they became eligible," Ranney coach Tahj Holden said. "Phil and Ahmadu have been big for us all season. It wasn't just this game. The beauty of our team is that at any moment any of our five seniors or Phil or anybody on our team can step up and have a huge impact."
The feat saw Ranney become the first team in Shore Conference history to win the Tournament of Champions. The magnitude of the accomplishment took some time to sink in for Antoine, who finishes his career ranked 26th in N.J. history with 2,457 points.
"It didn’t hit me until a couple of minutes into the locker room when I took off my jersey," he said. "That was the last time that I was going to take off a Ranney jersey. The last four years were unbelievable with these guys. The work that we all put in the last four years was amazing and it shows.”
Ranney had to do plenty of work until the final horn in the TOC final.
After erasing its first half deficit with a 17-7 third quarter run, Ranney headed into the fourth with a 47-46 lead. It used a 10-2 run to extend that lead to 57-48 with 4:48 left.
Bergen Catholic, however, was not going to go away easily and cut the lead to one-point on a put back from Zach Freemantle, who led Bergen Catholic with 19 points, with just over 2 minutes left.
Bergen Catholic evened the score at 63-63 on a layup from Will Richardson with 44 seconds left, but Sarnor brought the lead back to Ranney at 64-63 on a free throw with 15.9 seconds left.
On the ensuing possession, Richardson failed to hit another layup that would've given Bergen Catholic the lead. Wheeler grabbed the rebound and was fouled. He hit one of two to put Ranney ahead 65-63 with 4.9 seconds left. His second free throw was rebounded by Sarnor, who nearly ran out the clock, but was fouled with 0.2 seconds left. He hit both to ice the victory.
"I think we were in the position to win this game," Bergen Catholic coach Billy Armstrong said. "We got a good look around the rim. It just kind of rolled out and didn't go in. I think we were really there. It was one of those games that really could've gone either way. We were just a couple of points short."
Richard Greco covers boys basketball for NJ.com and may be reached at rgreco@njadvancemedia.com
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