Hoopsters Defeat Johnson to Improve to 7-3

The road to success has its share of twists and turns, and while the Cranford boys' varsity basketball team won by a seemingly easy 13 points Friday night over Arthur L. Johnson, there wasn't much happiness to be found afterwards despite their 79-66 triumph.

The Cougars' solid 7-3 start has them thinking big, with a conference or state championship on their list of season-long goals. So you could understand their frustration when they trailed 19-16 after one quarter, and 31-29 at halftime. They expected more and so did their coach.

"Of all the games, we only played one quarter here tonight," said Cranford head coach Ryan Huber. "From our standpoint, that's a little bit unacceptable. We're a better team than we showed. I'm very unhappy with our attitude and our performance, but we were good enough to get a win. As we move on in the county and state tournament, this is not going to get it done. We have to start focusing better in practice and preparing a little bit better."

"We came out flat," said Green. "We should have had this team up by 20 early in the game, but coach gave us a talk in the locker room at halftime, that we have to show everybody we're better, so we came out hard and took a big lead."

Last year, Huber saw a similar effort when they visited the Crusader gym.

"I think it was a little bit of everything," said Huber. "Not being focused, not playing in a week, maybe underestimating them a little bit. We challenged the kids at halftime, some kids stepped up. That's a credit to their character. It's a credit to our program that we do have kids that will step up. It was a rough halftime talk, but the kids responded, that's all that matters."

The Cougars came out of the locker room fired up, going from two points down to 19 points ahead in the eight minutes it took to play the third quarter.

They stretched the lead to as many as 21 before ALJ got within 10 with four minutes to go. But the Cougars' quick defense held them at bay, while the guard play of Nick Pace, Sean Trotter and Joey Papandrea kept possession until it was time to create with dribble drives and nifty dishes.

Outside of their self-inflicted criticism there were some positives to come out of this game.

Shooting guard Kendall Grier found his shooting touch to the tune of a game-high 23 points, to go along with eight rebounds.

"I just try as hard as I can, I got good looks with people distributing the ball at the right times," said Grier. "I was just trying as hard as I can to get the team the win. We're pretty much thinking, we have to keep with it, keep playing hard. We gotta be 100 percent through the layup lines, through the bus ride here and get more prepared and be ready for the game."

Will Green added 18 points and 8 rebounds against the Crusaders. Sophomore Chris Gross had 14 points and six rebounds, while Pace tallied nine points and a team-high six assists.

"We're playing very well recently," said Green. "If we keep pounding inside, playing great defense, I think we can win the conference and show people what we can do."

Hillside is set to visit Cranford on Tuesday January 26 at 4 p.m. in another key conference matchup.

"They're such a good, athletic team," said Huber. "They're going to pressure us, they're going to try and do some different things to stop us, but we have enough in the bank, that if we play our game, we should be okay."

"Because we're 7-3 we have a target on our backs," said Grier. "Coach tells us that every day. Pretty much now, we gotta fight all the best opponents, they gotta play as hard as they can to beat off the top team, and that's us, so we just have to try as hard as we can."