Boys Basketball – St. Rose Rides Hodge Brothers, Dominant Defense to First Ever Shore Conference Title

WEST LONG BRANCH -- At the end of his sophomore year at St. Rose in 2021-22, Luke Roman had himself a varsity letter, some big-game experience and a path to being one of the top players for the Purple Roses over his final two seasons of high school.

Then, the best team in school history showed up.

Between the end of Roman's sophomore year and the beginning of his junior year, St. Rose added two brothers from Belgium who would become top-100 players nationally in their respective classes, a standout from Italy with family ties to New Jersey, and three in-state transfers who are three of most talented players from Monmouth County currently still in high school.

With the roster overhaul, Roman went from a potential centerpiece of a team that has lived around the .500 mark year-in and year-out to an upperclassman fighting for every minute after getting jumped on the depth chart by seven players.

"My role has changed a lot, obviously," Roman said. "When they came, I had to go from like a four to a five man. It was hard to change. They came in after we graduated some guys, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I guess I’m not going to play as much.’ It was hard at the beginning, but I adapted and I realized that we’re a great community, we’re a great family and we had a chance to do something special for the school."

Almost two full seasons later, it was Roman who ended up with the ball in the final seconds of St. Rose's first ever appearance in the Shore Conference Tournament final and he made sure to soak it all in as he dribbled out the clock on its first ever championship -- a fitting ending for a player who has been there for the St. Rose program before the Hodge Brothers and St. Rose after the Hodge Brothers.

In its second season playing with its overhauled, upgraded roster, St. Rose completed a dominant run through the Shore Conference and won its first ever SCT championship by shutting down defending champion Manasquan, 48-27, Sunday at OceanFirst Bank Center on the campus of Monmouth University.

Sophomore Jayden Hodge starred Sunday with 19 points, 10 rebounds and three steals while shutting out Manasquan senior sharpshooter Alex Konov on defense. As a team, St. Rose held Manasquan to 11 points in the second half and without a field goal for a 15-minute stretch of game clock that spanned the second, third and fourth quarters.

"That’s what coach told us: if we play defense, we will win this game," Hodge said. "Even if we miss shots, even if we miss free throws; if we get stops, it doesn’t matter if we miss shots as long as we are getting stops and that’s how we played."

In the first six minutes and change of the game, Manasquan scored 12 points and appeared ready to give No. 1 seed a major challenge. By the time both teams pulled the starters and regulars with just under two minutes to go, Manasquan had scored as many points over the previous 26 minutes as it had in the first six.

After a wobbly start, St. Rose's defense was elite and for the first time in program history, the Purple Roses are at the top of the Shore Conference.

Senior Matt Hodge started the St. Rose scoring with a thunderous dunk on a drive to the basket, then Jayden Hodge scored St. Rose's next 12 points, including the last 10 of the first quarter. Manasquan jumped out to a 12-8 lead behind junior Griffin Linstra and senior Jason Larned, but Jayden Hodge pulled the Purple Roses even by the end of the quarter.

"That played great in the first quarter," Jayden said of Manasquan. "They came out to play and kind of shocked us. We just stayed composed."

St. Rose scored the first six points of the second quarter to make it a 10-0 run and an 18-12 lead, but Linstra responded with four straight points to pull Manasquan within 18-16.

From there, the Purple Roses methodically built on the lead, including scoring the final six points of the quarter on three-pointers by freshman Avery Lynch and Matt Hodge.

Manasquan managed only four points on four free-throws during the third quarter, with St. Rose winning the third, 17-4, to take a 41-20 lead. St. Rose ran the lead to 46-20 before Larned scored on a putback with 4:39 left to make it 46-22. Larned's score was Manasquan's first field goal in near two full quarters-worth of time, with Linstra's layup that made it 18-14 in the second quarter serving as the last Manasquan field goal prior to the third.

"I told them if they played defense the way we're capable of for 32 minutes, it's not going to matter what we do on offense," St. Rose coach Brian Lynch said. "They (Manasquan) can throw whatever wrinkles they want at us with their defense, but there is nothing they can do to affect the way we play defense."

Sunday marked the third time this season St. Rose held an opponent under 30 points and Manasquan is the first team with a winning record to come up short of 30 against the Purple Roses. To Manasquan's credit, the Warriors were the first St. Rose opponent to hold the newly-minted Shore Conference Tournament champions under 50 points this season.

"We just had to play defense in this game," Jayden Hodge said. "I didn’t know they had under 30. It didn’t seem like it after the way they played in the first quarter. We just did a great job of communication on defense, aggressiveness, and just talking to each other."

Matt Hodge was St. Rose's only other player to reach double-figure scoring, finishing with 11 points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals. Lynch scored seven off the bench and senior Gio Panzini posted eight rebounds and three blocks to go with five points in the win.

"The level has gone up immensely," Roman said. "All the people that came in – the Hodges, Gio, Bryan, Evan – they made a great impact in the community and with their talent."

Panzini (Red Bank Catholic), Evan Romano (Holmdel) and Peter Mauro (Gill St. Bernard) were the in-state transfers to join St. Rose last year and Panzini and Romano have remained on the team this year while making major strides. Sophomore Tyler Cameron has played key minutes off the bench in each of his two high school seasons and gave St. Rose two points and four rebounds off the bench.

Junior point guard Bryan Ebeling is the transfer from Italy and his father, John, was a former standout at Steinert High School before playing professionally overseas. Ebeling has played through a sprained ligament in his right thumb since the middle of January and is recovering from a flu virus that caused him to miss the semifinal win over Christian Brothers Academy on Thursday. Ebeling did not play his usual number of minutes on Sunday and did not score, but he gave the Purple Roses quality defensive minutes.

Linstra finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds while Larned had six points and seven board to lead Manasquan. Konov, meanwhile, was the target of Jayden Hodge's defensive attention because of how much his shooting can feed Manasquan's overall offense.

"If we could keep Alex from getting going, that puts a lot of pressure on Griffin to make shots and create offense," Lynch said. "Griffin's a good scorer, but we had Matt guarding him, so we wanted to make him have to create their offense and to his credit, he got them going early, but we felt like if we kept challenging their guys to take their guy one-on-one, it would eventually benefit us."

With Sunday's win, St. Rose is on the cusp of clinching an undefeated season vs. Shore Conference competition, which would make the Purple Roses the sixth Shore Conference team in the last 10 full seasons (including 2019-20) to go unbeaten against Shore Conference competition. St. Rose could, potentially, play Ranney in the NJSIAA South Jersey Non-Public B quarterfinals, but that would be the last Shore Conference opponent for the Purple Roses this season.

By the surface-level numbers, Ranney's 2018-19 team was more dominant against Shore Conference competition, which the Panthers outscored by an average of 44.8 points per game in 16 games, which dwarfs St. Rose's 36-point average margin of victory in its 17 games. St. Rose, however, faced better regular-season competition than did Ranney, which faced Asbury Park, Mater Dei, Point Pleasant Beach , Keyport, Keansburg and Henry Hudson two times each in divisional play.

When comparing St. Rose's SCT results to the other unbeaten teams from the Shore over the last decade, this year's Purple Roses team was indeed the most dominant by margin of victory. St. Rose outscored its four opponents by an average of 33.25 per game, with Sunday's 21-point margin the closest any of them came. Manasquan's 19-point home loss to St. Rose was the closest any Shore Conference team came to beating St. Rose during the regular season.

If there is a team, St. Rose knows not to look past, it is Ranney. The Panthers stunned St. Rose in last year's SCT semifinal and since that loss, the Purple Roses have used that shortcoming as motivation and a reminder that their defense can conceal a sub-standard shooting night.

"In my experience and in talking to coaches and reading books, the best learning opportunities come through your failures," said Lynch, who never lost an SCT game in his three seasons as a player at Christian Brothers Academy during the middle of the Colts' four straight championships from 1993 to 1996. "We had to learn how to handle failure and at first, we didn't handle it well. We lost our next game to Marlboro and we had to do some real soul-searching. Fortunately, we regrouped for the state tournament and won the section, but from that moment on, our message to the players has been use every game as a chance to learn and get better."

"It means a lot to win because last year, we came up short against Ranney in the semifinals, so we didn’t make it here," Jayden Hodge said. "We made it this year and it means a lot to the school, to me and my brother, to the team. We did our best and we got the W. We’re going to come in next year and try to do it again."

St. Rose will again be the overwhelming favorite in its next tournament, but the stakes are even higher. If the Purple Roses run the table and win their first NJSIAA Non-Public B championship since 1977, they are likely to finish as the No. 1 team in the state. Last year, the lost the Non-Public B final at Rutgers to Roselle Catholic, which finished No. 1 in the state.

The prospect of the Hodge brothers going from relative unknowns to two of the state's best players for a program that has not made these kinds of waves in decades being on the cusp of a No. 1 ranking in the state is a journey the Purple Roses players already appreciate.

"St. Rose, nobody knew it around the country and now its making a name for itself," Jayden Hodge said. "It means a lot. We just want to stay doing this thing, keep winning games, come back next year and do the same thing. That’s our goal."

However that journey concludes, Lynch was thrilled his team got to experience a championship victory and was particularly glad Roman -- who is the lone player on this year's team to play key minutes on Lynch's first team at St. Rose in 2021-22 -- got to play first-half minutes and end the game with the ball in his hands.

"I was ecstatic to get him in there, not just at the end, but in the first half to play some key minutes," Lynch said of Roman. "He was the only sophomore who played on varsity two years ago for me, so to watch him embrace the new guys and do anything the team has needed has been really important and in a way, it has made him a leader for us as a senior.

"On a lot of other teams in the Shore, he would be a big piece of the puzzle, or at least a bigger piece. But to his credit, I can't think of a game where we put him in and he has hurt us. He goes in, he does his job for a few minutes, maybe gets a rebound, makes a good pass, takes a charge, then comes back out. I went in looking at us as a seven-man rotation, but it has been more like seven-and-a-half because Luke can go in and give us a few quality minutes when we need him."

Roman also accounted for the final two St. Rose points of the game with a tip-in. The senior who stuck around despite losing his minutes and numbers got to have his moment just before the championship celebration.

"It was a great experience to be out there," Roman said. "I’m really appreciative of my coaches and my teammates for making this happen. Definitely not something I saw happening during my sophomore year, but it's been worth it."