Raiders Edge Destroyers For 2nd Time In 24 Days
DUNELLEN, NJ–After running through much of the GMC Gold, the Raiders of Piscataway Tech, ranked in the GMC Hoops Top Ten for much of the season, hit a bump in the road with a loss at home two days earlier against Timothy Christian in a Gold Division showdown. Â P-Way Tech was tested again when it faced off against Dunellen on Friday night (Janauary 27th).
For the second time in less than a month, the smaller Dunellen squad took the talented Raiders to the limit before falling. Â Piscataway Tech won the contest by the score of 48-45 after trailing 14-7 after one period, and 20-15 at the half. Â Like the Timothy Christian game two days earlier, the Raiders got the bulk of their scoring from junior forward, Will Joyce (18 points) and senior guard, Galen Smith (16 points).
Dunellen was led by the efforts of Casey Wenzel, who scored 16 points for the game including 11 in the first half. Â Dylan Hoski and Deon Brown chipped in a losing cause for DHS with 10 points each. Â Dunellen took it to Piscataway Tech in the first half by scoring the first four points. Â The Destroyers then got threes from Wenzel and Sean Gibney to go up by seven heading into the second period.
The Raiders struggled in the halfcourt against Dunellen’s zone defense. Â P-Way Tech took shots from the perimeter rather than try to work the ball into Joyce. Â When the Raiders did get the ball to Joyce in the first half, it was an automatic basket like the layups in back to back possessions at the 2:26 and 1:51 marks to close the gap to 18-15. Â Prior to that though, Joyce had only two points in the game, and hadn’t scored in a quarter. Â Smith didn’t fare much better with only a three point play at the 4:53 mark of the first period for his only points of the opening half. The Raiders also shot themselves in the foot with turnovers.
However, over the final two periods, P-Way Tech got 12 points from Joyce and 13 from Smith as it outscored the Destroyers by a margin of 33-27 for the win. Â Smith had all three of his treys in the final two quarters while going 4 of 6 from the foul line in the last 25.8 seconds to preserve the victory. Â Two of Smith’s treys came in the first 5:35 of the third quarter when the Raiders put together the decisive run of the game with a 14-3 tear for a 29-23 lead. Â Joyce, who ended up with 10 points in the third, also had six during the run. Â The Raiders played with much more urgency in the second half, and the take it to Dunellen approach worked.
The game was close throughout. Â Neither team had a lead bigger than seven points in the contest. Â However, there was only one lead change. Â Dunellen trailed by two on a couple occasions and three several more times, but couldn’t get any closer than that. Â It was still a gritty performance by the Destroyers, which have battled injuries and illness all year. Â Give credit to Piscataway Tech, which showed that it was just as tough by battling back from a difficult loss to overcome its first half struggles to win in a hostile environment.