No. 1 Montgomery looks to snap two-game skid when No. 2 Gill St. Bernard’s comes to town

With a challenging schedule coming off back-to-back Central Jersey Group 4 championships, the Montgomery boys’ basketball team aced its first eight games.

The last two have been a different story, still against top-flight competition.

Now 8-2, the top-ranked Cougars are coming off two tough losses, and their week doesn’t get any easier as Murderer’s Row continues Thursday when No. 2 Gill St. Bernard’s – also 8-2 – visits Skillman for a Skyland Conference Delaware Division game you can hear live on Central Jersey Sports Radio.

Tip-off is at 5:30 pm as Mike Pavlichko calls all the action, with pregame at 5:15; click here to listen.

The two losses are nothing to sneeze at.

First, it was a narrow, 53-51 loss to state-ranked No. 6 Linden, 53-51 in the Warrior Classic at Manasquan back on Sunday. The Cougars led by two at the half, and lost by two. That’s how tight it was, with Penn-bound senior point guard Ethan Lin leading the way with 21 points.

Then, Tuesday, it was a shootout in Somerset, one of those games that just takes on a life of its own. The Cougars – ranked No. 11 in the state, by the way – fell to state No. 9 (and CJSR/Bellamy & Son Paving No. 3) Rutgers Prep, 89-73, in a game that featured 27 combined three pointers. Lin finished with 29, and five from downtown, while the Argonauts’ Rocco Loomis and Julian Ceberio each finished with 21 and had six and seven triples, respectively. William Brunson led all scorers with 27.

Head coach Kris Grundy – now in his 21st season as Cougars’ head coach – knows the score. While they’d love to be 10-0, his teams don’t shy away from anyone. They’ll take a loss and learn from it, and get better the next time out.

Gill, for its part, is tenth in the state rankings, and Montgomery would certainly not like to come up empty in this nasty three-game stretch. They’ve also got a solid Hillsborough squad next week, and a weekend matchup with St. Thomas Aquinas, which led No. 4 St. Joseph-Metuchen at halftime Tuesday, but saw the Falcons pull away in the end.

This is what you get when you play a schedule like Montgomery does. But getting their first win of the New Year would be nice, too.

Click below to her Montgomery head coach Kris Grundy talk about the Cougars with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko: