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Kashaun Barnes Sparks Ramapo College to 80-67 Win Over Kean

Coming off an impressive 77-50 last Saturday against Stockton, the Ramapo College Roadrunners faced off against Kean University on Wednesday night at the Bradley Center. The Roadrunners came out clicking on all cylinders, jumping out to a double-digit lead not even eight minutes into the first half. Led by Kashaun Barnes 12 points and Bryant Quill tallying 10 points the advantage ballooned to 37-21 with less than six minutes remaining.

However, the Cougars did not resemble a 1-6 squad, shooting 63 percent from the field managing to trim the deficit to 45-33 at halftime. Ramapo College also shot efficiently from the field at 46 percent, knocking down five trifecta’s and sinking 10 of 14 free throws.

In the second half, the Roadrunners increased the margin back up to 15 with 14 minutes to go. Kean refused to go away, slicing the deficit down to 54-46 at the 13-minute mark. Making matters worse Quill (15 points) and Andre Morgan departed the game with injuries. Barnes stepped up scoring ten points, along with a trio of players off the bench (33 total points) squashed the momentum of Kean for the 80-67 victory.

“If you ever had a bad win, we got beat points in the paint, this team is at the bottom of the league for a reason, a new coach, building the program from the ground up, eight freshman with three of them starting,” head coach Chuck McBreen said of the win. “I got four upper classman and to come out with this effort and not put this team away and to keep them in the whole game. We were up on them by 19 and then it gets down to single digits.

“Quill really stepped up, he came from Division II and finally tonight got his opportunity and played well on the offensive end. We’re not deep to begin with and we’ll see where we’re at practice tomorrow and don’t know who is going to be there.”

“Overall it looked like it was pretty good on the scoreboard but we turned the ball over 12 or 13 times, missed a few layups and terrible rebounding,” said Kashaun Barnes. “Coach [McBreen] emphasized on what was going to win the game and had to rebound and protect the ball in the last eight minutes, make sure what we’re doing and keep pushing. It’s a whole new five guys and have to protect home court no matter what.”

Next up, Ramapo travels down to Rowan University(4-3,1-3 NJAC) on Saturday afternoon with tip-off set for 1:00 p.m.

“If we play anything like our effort today they are going to run us out of the building,” said McBreen. “They play hard, push the pace and we have not shown the ability to slow the pace down. Kean got out and shot 64 percent in the first half on layups and we could not guard anybody and beat us up the floor. We pride ourselves on limiting easy baskets and something we need to do.”

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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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