Chatham Cougars’ Boy’s Hoops Dominate Mount Olive in Cougar Classic

It looked early on that Chatham High School Boy’s basketball team would be in for a dogfight against Mount Olive (0-2), as the Cougars led 10-8 after a physical first quarter.

But Chatham’s defense went into lockdown mode, and its offense did enough to rout the Marauders, 62-35, Friday night in the first day of the 2024 Cougar Classic at home.

While the Chatham (4-0) has won its last two tilts by an average of 33 points, and yesterday’s game by 27, they are not always going to be blowouts, head coach Todd Ervin noted. He added that the Cougars will need to play better going forward if they want to stay competitive on the tough New Jersey high school basketball scene.

But Ervin did say that his defense was the reason for the victory.

“We missed a ton of layups, shot the ball horribly. But I thought we played a pretty good defense; turn them over a fair amount,” Ervin said. “We’ll take it. You can’t win every game by 40 points.

“I knew they were going to be competitive, and they got some athletes,” he added. “It was a physical game. The defense was the difference for us, I thought.”

The second period remained close, as Chatham led by six points at the half.

Senior 6-foot-7 center Quinn Burke came out and drained a three pointer, followed by a bucket, to give the Cougars a 29-21 advantage with 6:36 to go in the third quarter.

Chatham took a 38-25 advantage after junior guard Nick Fabijanic sank two from the charity stripe with 1:16 left in the third period. The Cougars ended the quarter up by 11 points.

Chatham went on a 6-1 run to start the final period, gaining a 47-31 lead with 5:58 to go in the contest. The Cougars ripped off another run, this time it was 8-0, extending their advantage to 55-31 with 3:13 left in the game. That was more enough to put away Mount Olive.

Junior Ryan Leach, a scrappy, high motor guard with zero quit in his game, led Chatham with 16 points, while Burke contributed 14 points and several rebounds in the lopsided victory.

Admittedly dealing through zone frustrations, Burke said that the Cougars ultimately solved the Marauders’ defense after surmounting a similar style of defensive play, 54-45, against Sparta to start the 2024-25 year.

“It’s definitely a different look, but they run the same zone as Sparta did,” Burke explained. “We figured it out toward the end that the (our) press was working, and we weren’t used to use to zone team like that at first. We should have taken them more seriously at first.”

But it worked out for Chatham in the end.

The Cougars hit the hardwood again today at 8:00 p.m. against Cranford in Day 2 of the Cougar Classic at home.

— Jerry Del Priore