VIDEO: Warriors scrap to win over Shawnee behind strong second half

Posted: December 17th 2023

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

OCEAN CITY – A play midway through the third quarter epitomized the effort the Wildwood High School boys basketball team exhibited Sunday afternoon against Shawnee at the Ocean City PBA Tipoff Weekend showcase event at Ocean City High School.

Three different Warrior players dove for two different loose balls on the same sequence, Wildwood winning the ball each time. The ball was eventually passed ahead to Junior Hans, who knocked down a right-wing three-point shot to give Wildwood its largest lead of the game at 31-22. All five Warrior players on the court touched the ball on the play.

Wildwood went on to post a 48-40 decision over the Renegades, giving the team an early-season signature victory over a respected Group IV team from the highly regarded Olympic Conference.

Wildwood improved to 1-1, bouncing back from a close road loss to Overbrook in its opener.

“This is huge – huge for our team and our program,” Wildwood coach Scott McCracken said. “The mentality of the team was that we really needed this game. We’ve played two tough teams to start the season here and after losing the first one, this game was one we felt we had to have.”

Wildwood started well, getting three three-pointers from Jordan Fusik in the opening quarter to get out to a four-point lead.

“We stressed before the game that we needed to get good looks and make shots and fortunately Jordan made some big ones early,” McCracken said. “He carried us in the first half.”

But Shawnee rallied and eventually took a one-point lead into halftime.

Wildwood, though, reeled off a 10-0 run to start the third quarter, capped by the three-pointer by Hans. Shawnee rallied again and closed to within three points with less than minutes to go, but a short jumper by Hans, a free throw by Hans and two free throws by Brian Cunniff upped the lead to six with 45 seconds to go. Ryan Troiano iced the game with a free throw with less than 30 seconds to go that gave Wildwood a seven-point lead. Josh Pitnella also made two free throws on two separate trips to the line at critical stages late in the game.

“We’ve got some really tough teams on our schedule,” McCracken said. “We wanted to play in this event and they put us against Shawnee and that’s a compliment to us because they thought we could compete. But at the same time, I’m sure there were some people out there who thought we might not have a shot with us being a Group I playing a Group IV. I thought it was an impressive effort by our kids.”

Hans finished with a game-high 21 points, getting 17 of them in the second half. Fusik, who made 5 of 10 three-point attempts, added 17 points.

Jake Jones (16) and Ryan Senft (14) led Shawnee, which shot just 4 for 24 as a team from three-point range.