Hopewell Valley holds off Lawrence for third time
It’s tough to beat a team three times, as the saying goes, but this Hopewell Valley boys basketball squad was too focused and too driven when the Central Jersey Group III Tournament began Thursday to fall victim to that trap.
From their perspective, the Bulldogs are hoping that the third time is the charm.
After falling short in games that could have won CVC Valley Division title and the Mercer County Tournament, fourth-seeded Hopewell Valley began its state playoffs run with a 5744 win at home against 13thseeded Lawrence.
“We’re definitely fired up, definitely a little amped up after losing two big games that we definitely could’ve won and we didn’t win,” senior guard Mac Torpey said. “We’re amped up. We want to win this one.”
So fired up that two days after losing to Pennington in the MCT final last Saturday, the Bulldogs held a morning practice on President’s Day and did nothing but shoot for 90 minutes. Then they prepared a game plan Tuesday and Wednesday for Lawrence, a familiar CVC foe that lost to Hopewell twice by single digits during the regular season.
“I think it was a good way to bounce back after a tough loss,” Torpey said. “No one wants to go into practice at 8:30 on a Monday, but especially on your day off and have to go, really run full court down and back, but it was nice. We got shots up, built our confidence up again.”
Fittingly, Hopewell buried six 3-pointers in the first half of Thursday’s game.
As has been typical during this breakout season, Hopewell had a balanced scoring output. Sophomore Julian Van Hoeck matched his career high with 15 points, senior John Michael Vlassac added 13, Torpey netted nine, junior Milan Desai and sophomore Jude Berman had eight apiece, and senior Jake O’Grady tacked on four free throws.
“Our first word that we talk about is ‘togetherness,’” Hopewell coach Matt Stein said. “We know that we’ve got to share the ball. I know one of our guys was saying, ‘If you score, I score,’ and so you have to work together. Getting more assists than turnovers was a big thing that we were focusing on, and so you saw plays tonight. Just work the offense, be patient with it and go from there.”
Lawrence coach Jeff Molinelli, who grew up with Stein in Mercer County and has coached alongside him in the CVC since 2016, agreed that this Hopewell team is as deep and connected as the program has ever been in recent memory.
“Credit to Matt, they always run good offense, and this year they really move the ball better than they have in most years,” Molinelli said. “They share it, they trust each other, and I think they’re gonna be a tough team to beat.”
On the other side, Stein felt mixed emotions and knew this wasn’t going to be an easy win with the two teams being so familiar with each other.
Hopewell led wire-to-wire, but Lawrence trailed by only six points with 3:12 remaining in the third quarter before Hopewell ended the period on a 9-3 run.
“Obviously growing up in Lawrence, coaching with Molinelli, it’s fun playing each other but to end the season against each other, it’s one of the tough things,” Stein said. “He does a great job. It’s a team that we were, not worried about, but you’ve got to be very careful about because they were in a lot of close games throughout the year including us twice.”
Hopewell’s switching defense created favorable matchups and limited Lawrence to about 34 percent shooting from the field.
And despite being outrebounded, Hopewell’s offense shot about 45 percent and had only a handful of turnovers. That was crucial because Lawrence’s pressing defense caused problems during the regular season.
“Every day in practice we were going over the things when they would call a play, we knew what the play was,” Torpey said. “We knew our defense was definitely gonna be there, and our offense executed tonight.”
Senior Robert Kelly led Lawrence with 13 points and ended the season as the Cardinals’ leading scorer with 301 points.
“I thought we had a great year,” Molinelli said. “I told them before the game, win or lose, they can hold their heads high. We graduated 95 percent of our scoring (from last year), and to get two games better than we were last year is a huge credit to them and I can’t thank them enough.”
This marked Hopewell’s first state playoff win in six years and only the second home playoff win in 35 years.
Next up is another home game in Tuesday’s quarterfinals against fifth-seeded Colts Neck. A win in that contest would tie the program record of 21 wins and be another sign of how much this tight-knit group has molded throughout the winter.
“We’ve definitely grown a lot,” Torpey said. “Everyone steps up, guys off the bench step up and I think that helps have a very multi-factored offense.”