Lancers Best the Bucs, 46-39

The Livingston Boys Basketball team improved to 2-0 following a strong fourth-quarter comeback, defeating Belleville 46-39 on Tuesday night at Livingston High School.

"Livingston played a great game. They battled back and I can't say enough about their coach. He does a great job with them," said Belleville head coach Ted Sochaski.

Livingston found themselves down 33-27 to a strong Belleville team going into the final quarter of play when the Lancers leaders stepped up their game.

"Outscoring them by 14 points in the second half is a tribute to the kids and sticking with it," said Livingston head coach Dave Cohen. 

Guards Matt Fung and Sam Abam took over the game, knocking down a handful of big fourth-quarter shots. 

"Fung is a tremendous leader," Cohen said. "To have a guy when things aren't going well in the first half to be able to maintain his composure and step up and make plays on both ends of the floor, he did it all for us."

Fung finished with 22 points. Abam had 15 on the night.

After an evenly played first quarter that saw Belleville take a 12-10 lead, the Belleville team took full control in the second quarter enroute to a 29-22 halftime lead. Belleville used their resident big man Tommy Rosario, who was coming off  a 20-point season opener, to control the game inside the paint.

"Right now he's our most valuable player," said Sochaski. "Without him I don't know where we'd be." Rosario finished with 16 points.

Belleville with this loss falls to 1-1 on the season as they head into a matchup with Caldwell High School next Tuesday, Dec. 28.

"We need to just finish the game and we can't let other things come in the way," Sochaski said. "We have to win it ourselves."

The Lancers with the victory improve to 2-0 and head into a matchup with Clifton in a holiday tournament. "We need to come out of the gates a little bit stronger," Cohen said. "Clifton is going to be a challenge in the holiday tournament and we need to clean up some fundamentals."