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Bench Helps Ramapo Snap Two Game Losing Slide; Defeat Rutgers-Camden

The Ramapo College Roadrunners returned home to the Bradley Center after almost three weeks looking to turn a new page in 2018 against Rutgers-Camden. Ramapo is looking to rebound after dropping to 19th in the latest D3hoops.com Top 25 poll. Not only that, but losing both games for the first time in the D3hoops.com Classic Tournament in Las Vegas,

However, the Roadrunners got off to a sluggish start in the first half mustering only four points in the first six minutes. Head Coach Chuck McBreen had seen enough and decided to pull his entire starting five off the floor and insert the second unit off the bench. That move lit a spark, as Ramapo College went on an 8-0 taking a 12-10 lead.

The Roadrunners came up with another big spurt, a 9-0 run led by sophomore forward Matt Latka scoring 7 of his game high 15 points and sophomore guard Patrick Peterson tallying all of his eight points as Ramapo College took a 40-35 lead into the locker room.

“We got great bench play tonight and felt we could wear them down and in the end that’s what we did” said McBreen. “Not happy with our energy to start the game, effort and giving up so many baskets in the last six or seven minutes of the first half and to begin the second half. Their field goal percentage is in the 40’s and should have been in the 30’s.”

“We scored 89 points in the last 34 minutes and know we have a good bench and just need them to play together and have more consistency.”

Coming out of the gate in the second half, the Scarlet Raptors trimmed the deficit to 47-45 with 17 minutes remaining. Once again, the Roadrunners received contributions off the bench, this time sophomore guard Rob McWilliams dropped in 7 of his 12 points, extending the lead to 60-51 with 13 minutes left. Up 73-63 with seven minutes on the clock, Ramapo College started to pull away, knocking down shots from the perimeter and pounding the ball in the paint, going on a 13-2 run that put the game out of reach and 93-74 victory.

Senior guard Josh Ford delivered a game high 15 points and senior Christopher Moseley provided 12 points. The Roadrunners bench netted 50 points, while the defense forced Rutgers-Camden(2-10, 0-6 NJAC) into committing 17 turnovers that led to 21 points and grabbed 45 rebounds to 28 for the Scarlet Raptors.

“The beauty of our team is try to wear teams’ down with our bench and I think our starting five is one of the best in the country and guys coming off the bench sacrifice minutes to play on this team and bring the energy and that happened tonight,” said McWilliams.

“Coach(McBreen) says go in there and give it all you got and get the lead up. We have so much depth on this team that one of the starters can go in and give it his all and we can come in and give that player a break and come back in and how we work and worked out tonight and in past games”

“It wasn’t easy tonight and they were hanging around and at start of the second half they came out and scored 10 points in three or four minutes and now a 47-45 game and eventually started to separate” said McBreen. “It wasn’t pretty and at the end of the day we took care of business”

The schedule does get any easier for Ramapo College, hitting the road for the next two games before returning to the Bradley Center on January 13th against a New Jersey City University that is 10-2, and 4-1 in the NJAC. On Saturday, the Roadrunners travel down to TCNJ(The College of New Jersey) (9-3, 4-1 NJAC) with tip-off set for 3:00 p.m.

“We have a number of things to clean up and three big games coming up” McBreen said. “Everybody is gunning for us and the bulls-eye is on our back and need to bring the energy every night and everybody is bringing their A-game against us.”

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Sunil Sunder Raj

Since July of 2014 Sunil Sunder Raj has been with In The Zone. Sunil has experience covering minor league baseball, high school and college sports. A beat writer for the Rockland Boulders for six years, Ramapo College men’s basketball for four years, NJIT men’s basketball and Seton Hall women’s basketball. Now focusing on feature articles about athletes, coaches and sports media professionals. A graduate of Ramapo College of New Jersey with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism.
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