Boys Basketball – Manasquan Star Ben Roy Commits to Boston University
Ben Roy is nearing the final year of his historic high-school career at Manasquan and now he knows where his next home will be.
Roy - a 6-foot-2 guard and two-time Shore Sports Network Player of the Year - announced Monday via his Instagram account that he has given his non-binding verbal commitment to play at Boston University.
Playing in the Patriot League, Boston University has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2011 but would have been in the 2020 Tournament had it not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Terriers defeated Colgate in the 2020 Patriot League championship game, but could not rekindle the magic during a 7-11 2020-21 season.
Boston will look to Roy help ignite a return to the NCAA Tournament, that is, unless the Terriers' experienced 2021-22 team can't end the drought this coming season. The top four scorers from last season return for this season and all four are either graduate students or seniors.
With Roy's announcement, the Shore Conference's best player of the past three seasons is now committed to play college basketball and will head into 2021-22 looking to put a bow on a brilliant four-year career.
As a sophomore in 2019-20, Roy broke out and won the first of his two SSN Player of the Year Awards, while also winning the Player of the Year honor from the Shore Conference Basketball Coaches Association. That season, he averaged 18.1 points per game and his 578 total points led a Manasquan team that went 31-1.
Last year, during the COVID-shortened 2021 season, Roy led the Shore Conference 24 points per game while leading Manasquan to a 12-0 record and a second straight Shore Conference championship, albeit an unofficial one for the 2021 season.
In three high school seasons, Roy has helped lead Manasquan to a cumulative record of 72-5, including 43-1 over the past two years while playing a stacked out-of-conference schedule each season. The Warriors have been ranked in the top-five in the state by NJ Advance Media in each of the past two seasons, including No. 2 to close out 2021.
Roy enters his senior year with 1,174, significantly fewer points than he would have if both his sophomore and junior seasons were not shortened by the pandemic. Manasquan was supposed to play Camden in the NJSIAA Group II semifinal when its 2019-20 season was canceled and the 2021 season included 20 fewer games than the prior year's schedule.
While the lost games of the last two seasons are likely to keep Roy out of the Shore Conference's exclusive 2,000-point club, he could very well become Manasquan's all-time leading scorer. Roy enters his senior year 506 points away from matching 2004 graduate Tom White.
Roy chose Boston over a list of scholarship offers that included, according to verbalcommits.com, Toledo, the University of Pennsylvania, St. Peter's, Monmouth, Brown, Bryant, Fairfield, Holy Cross, Nebraska and Robert Morris.
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