Boys Basketball: Gill St. Bernard's wins third consecutive SCT title with victory over Rutgers Prep

SOMERSET – When Alex Schachne started his freshman year at Gill St. Bernard’s School, his goal was to win the Somerset County Tournament title all four years. Now a junior, Schachne is three-quarters of the way there.

With the Knights up one at halftime, Schachne scored 12 points in the third quarter and 20 of his 24 points in the second half to lead the top-seeded Gill St. Bernard’s boys basketball team to a 71-61 victory over third-seeded Rutgers Prep in the SCT final, its third consecutive county title, on Saturday afternoon at Franklin High School.

“I think it’s just a testament to the basketball Gill plays and the program we’ve established,” Schachne said. “Going into freshman year, my goal was to win four county championships, and we have three now. We had a great young group coming in this year, guys like me and Paul (Mulcahy) grew up playing together, and we felt really good about this group and our ability to win.”

With the Knights (23-3) leading 33-32 at halftime, Schachne came out in the third quarter on fire, scoring eight straight points to give his team a 44-38 lead halfway through the third. Schachne scored four more points, and senior Michael Morreale also hit a 3-pointer down the stretch that punctuated a 6-2 run at the end of the quarter, as the Knights took a 53-46 lead into the final quarter.

After Schachne’s offensive explosion in the third, the junior helped ice the game as time ran out for Rutgers Prep, knocking down eight foul shots in the fourth quarter.

“It wasn’t even forced, I just let the game come to me,” Schachne said. “It’s a testament to my teammates passing me the ball and getting me involved. I was hot, and I went with it. It felt great to keep us in it and to start us really strongly in the third because that set the standard for the rest of the game.”

The first half was a back-and-forth affair with both sides draining shots from the outside. Rutgers Prep shot lights out from distance, sinking seven 3-pointers in the first half with sophomore Nahshon Battle tallying three of those seven.

Sophomore Paul Mulcahy helped keep the Knights toe-to-toe with the Argonauts, scoring 13 of his 18 points in the first half. It was much of the same for the Knights’ offense in the second half, but the Argonauts struggled to consistently make their jumpers as the Knights amped up their defensive pressure.

“In the first half, they played extremely well, especially offensively, they hit a bunch of threes,” Mulcahy said. “In the second half, I think we changed the tempo a bit, we started to press more to get into transition, started to lock down on defense and close out on shooters. Battle hit a bunch of threes so we had to get out to him.”

Staff Writer Daniel LoGiudice can be reached at dlogiudice@gannettnj.com. Follow him on Twitter @danny_logiudice.