New Look Rams Surprise Tigers On Second Night Of Action At MCC, 42-36
EDISON, NJ–The Rams continued their winning ways, improving to 2-0 under new head coach Rodney Harris, with a well-played 42-36 win over South Plainfield’s varsity squad.
Coach Harris has the Rams playing a different style of basketball from what we’ve seen over the past few years – fast breaks on offense and an aggressive man to man defense. The players have quickly adapted to it and it has worked in South River’s first two summer league games.
The run and gun offense is especially suitable to the Rams’ speedsters like Xavier Foster and Stevie Moore – and its definitely much more exciting to watch than the offense that SR had been running in previous seasons. The man to man defense has also frustrated opponents thus far, resulting in turnovers and numerous steals – again something we haven’t seen from South River in quite some time.
Getting back to the South Plainfield game, the Tigers, which soundly defeated Highland Park on Tuesday night, opened up an early first half lead but the Rams chipped away taking a 22-19 lead at the half behind some strong play from junior Shawn Fenton and junior Steve Moore (who finished with ten points before hurting his thumb/wrist late in the second half).
Fenton had two monster games on offense at the end of last season against Highland Park and Ranney Prep and it looks like his improved play has carried over to the summer league. South River needs an aggressive Fenton in order to be successful this year – hopefully he can keep it up.
As far as the second half went – the Rams continued their aggressiveness on defense and pulled away from the Tigers, getting the lead up to as much as ten with four minutes left in the game, before winning by six –42-36.
Shawn Fenton ended up with 18 points for the Rams, while sophomore Xavier Foster chipped in with 11. (Junior guard Brandon Walsh was unavailable for the game due to another commitment.)
Harris did a lot of substituting throughout the game and I must say that by not knowing many of the newer players, my game summary is somewhat lacking scoring specifics, etc. Players that saw game time included Louie Perez (he saw varsity action last season and is a good shooter), Briane Maine (a newcomer who has looked very promising in the first two games), Kevin Gilbert (saw limited varsity play last season), Tyler Harris, and Larry Smith (a freshman who also saw some limited varsity play last season).
The Rams have to work on their free throw shooting and still turned over the ball too much – but they did a very good job on breaking South Plainfield’s press – something that has killed South River in previous seasons. Judging from these first two games, I can only see very good things in the future for the Rams with Rodney Harris at the helm.
(The Rams played a severely depleted Sayreville squad last Tuesday in the opening game of the MCC Summer League and came away with a 42-33 win. The Bombers JV squad was very tough — playing with just 5 players throughout the entire game. At one point in the second half, Sayreville had only four players on the court after one of their players fouled out — he did come back in towards the end of the second half after an arrangement between the referees and the coaches, so both squads had five men on the court.
Brandon Walsh and Shawn Fenton paced the Rams in scoring. Walsh played well while he was in — perfect from the field in shooting while looking good scoring on several fast breaks.)
Next up for South River is Keyport this Tuesday, June 23rd at 8PM.
| Team | 1 | 2 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| South River (2-0) | 22 | 20 | 42 |
| South Plainfield (1-1) | 19 | 17 | 36 |