Boys Basketball: Colonia makes history, advances to GMCT final

MONMOUTH JUNCTION - The Colonia High School boys basketball team is familiar with the Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament final, but on Tuesday night, the Patriots made history all the same. 

Colonia became the first No. 7 seed to advance to the final in the history of the tournament with a 47-30 victory over third-seeded Old Bridge (18-7). The last No. 6 seed to advance to the final was St. Joseph (Met.) in 2008, and the last six seed to win the tournament was Piscataway in 2007. Since 1965, four teams have won the championship as the sixth seed. 

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On Thursday, the Patriots (15-8) will look to become the first seven seed to take home a title as they face top-seeded St. Joseph at 8 p.m. at the Rutgers Athletic Center. The Falcons defeated fourth-seeded Carteret on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer on Tuesday to advance to their 11th-straight final. 

Thursday's championship tilt will be a rematch of the 2015 final in which Colonia won its fifth overall title with a 54-38 victory over the Falcons.

Colonia, which upset second-seeded Piscataway in the quarterfinals on Sunday, got off to a slow start on Tuesday and trailed Old Bridge 12-5 after the first quarter and 17-11 at the half. 

"We were struggling in the first and second, we started to get it back in the third and then we just got focused and started doing what we do and we got back in the game, started to play," Colonia's Kristian Chapmann said. "They’re a great shooting team, we just had to stop them from shooting threes. We knew it would be a part of their game so if we stopped that we had a good chance of winning."

Trailing 18-14 with 7:06 remaining in the third quarter, Colonia went to the free throw line six straight times in the span of almost two minutes. Luke Valeriano connected on four of the six to tie the game 18-18 with 5:31 remaining, and Connor Bevilacqua hit two to put the Patriots ahead 20-18 with 4:54 left. 

A basket from Julius Belton retied the game 20-20 with 3:46 to play, but four-straight points gave Colonia a 24-20 lead with 1:01 left in the third. Belton and Mike Oliva then connected on five-straight points to close out the third quarter and put Old Bridge ahead 25-24. 

"I know personally I didn’t have it going offensively, but we were playing together, everyone was looking for the open man and we had a lot of open shots," Lehmann said. "Luke had I think three or four big threes that really helped us in the second half and we just kept it going."

The lead was short lived as the Patriots went on a 9-0 run to pull ahead 33-26 with 5:03 remaining in the game. Belton scored to pull the Knights within 33-28 with 4:41 left, but the Patriots finished out the game on a 14-2 run, which included 12 free throws, for the 47-30 final. 

"We stopped them, we limited them, one shot, rebounded the ball well and that was basically it, defense," Lehmann said. 

Colonia connected on 22-of-24 free throws, while Old Bridge finished 2-of-10.

Valeriano led Colonia with 18 points, including four 3-pointers. Lehmann finished with nine points and Chad Baker contributed eight points and eight rebounds. 

Belton recorded 14 points for Old Bridge, which was looking to advance to its first GMC Tournament final. Oliva chipped in 12 points and five rebounds. 

Staff Writer Lauren Knego: lknego@gannettnj.com; on Twitter: @laurenknego