OCEAN CITY – After a long holiday break, the Ocean City boys basketball team returned to the court with another big performance by Josh Lenko.
The junior led the way with 24 points for the Ocean City Red Raiders in their 64-40 wire-to-wire win over St. Joseph High School Jan. 8. It was Lenko’s third time scoring more than 20 points this season, which has helped the Raiders improve their record to 7-1.
Ocean City led the whole game but had to battle against a St. Joseph Wildcat squad that refused to go away in the first half. The Wildcats stayed within seven points of the lead throughout the half. The Raiders maintained the lead heading into half with excellent free throw shooting as they went six for eight from the line.
St. Joseph pulled within five points in the third quarter, but the Raiders’ offense came alive and overran the Wildcats to close out the game.
Up 31-26, Ocean City went on a 19-4 run fueled by a much quicker pace on offense. Chris Pontari scored six straight for the Raiders including a steal that he turned into an easy layup, but it was Lenko who finished the job in the fourth quarter.
Lenko had 13 of his points late to put the game out of reach. He did most of his damage under the basket and took advantage of getting fouled by shooting seven of nine from the free throw line.
Asked after the game about what changed in the second half, Lenko said, “We just tried speeding things up at the end thinking maybe they cannot keep up with us. We wanted to push it and move faster in transition and I feel that’s what we did.”
The big run was capped off by a layup in transition by senior Luke Tjoumakaris to give him 14 points on the day.
Tjoumakaris has been a beacon of consistency on the offensive side of the court as he has now reached double digits in all eight of Ocean City’s games. Pontari finished with 12 points for his highest scoring game of the season as he gets more playing time.
“I feel we just have a lot of trust in each other,” Lenko said. “I might have more some days but not have as much later but we are all always contributing to the win.”
The St. Joseph game was the second game off the holiday break for the Raiders as they had a meeting with Middle Township High School two days prior on Jan. 6. The Raiders came in with an undefeated record but fell 44-34 to Middle Township after a slow night offensively.
Ocean City’s 34 points were the lowest total of the season as Lenko credited some “jitters” heading into the game after the break.
“We came out for that game with a little bit of jitters, but that game is done now, and we came into this game saying we are going to play harder and together,” Lenko said.
The Raiders will return to the court at home at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 14, against Atlantic City, and then on back-to-back nights starting Friday, Jan. 16, against Wildwood Catholic Academy. It will be a rematch of a Cape-Atlantic League Tournament game last year which saw Wildwood Catholic narrowly beat Ocean City 52-51.
Holy Spirit High School will visit the Raiders the next day on Jan. 17. Ocean City won all three matchups last year against Holy Spirit. Games are at 6 p.m.
– By WILLIAM TRUITT/For the Sentinel