Livingston Boys Bounce Back

Bouncing back is what Livingston's boys basketball team did on Tuesday afternoon when they faced Glen Ridge away.

The Lancers, coming off a strong performance but a defeat at the hands of an undefeated Madison team on Saturday, used a new offensive scheme that gave them a 47-35 win against the Ridgers.

With the win, the Lancers raised their record to .500 for the season; the team now stands at 5-5.

Livingston won with balanced scoring as four players scored eight or more points.  Three players had double digits points: Sam White with 11, and both Matt Fung and Dan Abrahams had 10 points each.

"We put it behind us and we came out strong today," said Fung after the win over Glen Ridge. "This was a great bounce back game."

Fung added that they tried to move the ball down the court against Glen Ridge.

"We implemented a couple new things and pushed the ball down the floor," said Fung.

Livingston head coach David Cohen said that they recently started a low stack motion offense.

"We had put the changes in the third quarter against Madison and it worked pretty well," said Cohen.

In addition, the Livingston offense was able to break any defense that Glen Ridge threw at them.

"We did a good job adjusting to their man-to-man and find the open man underneath the basket," said Cohen.

But for Fung and Cohen, it still comes to clamping down and stopping the opposition.

"All year we have played really good defense," said Fung. "Our goal every game is to keep the other team to 10 points a quarter."

The Ridgers were kept to less than 10 points in the first and second quarters and only had 10 points in the third quarter and 11 points in the fourth quarter.

Livingston's defense took hold on the Ridgers top scorer, Carl Castor, who was limited to four points.

"We wanted to put the clamps on their best player," said Cohen.

Livingston started to take control of the game in the later part of the first half with the help of Fung and Alex Kalmus, who had eight points on the day. White passed the ball to Kalmus who got an easy bucket off the glass to raise the Lancers' lead to 21-14 with 30 seconds remaining in the half.

Fung then drained a three pointer from the right corner to give Livingston a 24-14 lead heading into halftime.

The Lancers will have a bigger hill to climb on Thursday when they take on undefeated Millburn at home at 7 p.m.  Livingston fell to Millburn 45-30 in the first game of the season.

Against Millburn on Thursday, Cohen believes that the Millers will see a different team as the Lancers look to put the first blemish on Millburn's record. Livingston hopes to get off to a faster start.