Sophomore Finn Marrah made a 3-pointer and two free throws late to lift Ramapo to a 41-37 win over NV/Demarest in the North 1, Group 3 state sectional final on Friday night.
DEMAREST – While Ramapo was winning its fifth straight state sectional title and second straight Group 3 state championship last season Finn Marrah was a couple of steps below, dominating on the freshman level as the Green Raiders showed off their program depth. Marrah was the leading scorer as Ramapo made a deep run in the Junior Jambo while the varsity was running around the state crushing every public school opponent it could find in the postseason.
On Friday night in the late stages of the North 1, Group 3 state sectional final, Marrah now a sophomore, a starter and solid contributor all season, found himself unmistakably swimming in the deep end of the state tournament pool.
Having not even attempted a single shot through three quarters plus five-minutes-and-42 seconds, Marrah was in the corner with the ball in his hands and with some space.
“I was coming off the bench; I was hesitant to shoot it. It was my first shot of the game and I had just checked in,” said Marrah. “I ball-faked, I was looking middle and they stayed off. I shot it.”
He did and when it went it, Marrah’s only field goal of the game and one of only two 3-pointers that Ramapo made on the night, brought the Raiders from down a point to a two-point lead with 2:18 remaining. Marrah also made two free throws down the stretch to help seal it.
According to the local fire marshal, the South Gym at Northern Valley/Demarest High School officially holds 650 people, so it was in front of about 800 or so that Marrah helped Ramapo, the No. 7 seed, clinch a 41-37 victory and its sixth straight state sectional title.
“Finn had a rough first half, but…big time onions on that corner three and then making the free throws,” said Ramapo head coach Nick Vier. “I am very happy that he stepped up.”
Marrah’s late contributions were, indeed, huge, but so was every other made basket in the rock fight that seems to break out every time these two programs meet up in a state championship setting. The last team to beat Ramapo in a sectional tournament game was seven years ago almost to the day when Demarest squeaked out a 37-36 victory to win its only sectional title since 2004.
Demarest's Marco DeCroce (left) scored 12 points in an entertaining matchup against fellow Division 1 football recruit Charlie Wingfield (11)
Demarest scored 37 points this time, too, and for a while it looked like it might be enough. A tough shooting night both ways saw Demarest hold a 7-4 lead after the first quarter and a 16-15 lead at halftime.
One of Vier’s halftime tweaks was to get freshman AJ Greig the ball in a position to do damage and that was on the block against a smaller defender. After a scoreless first half, Greig made the first two baskets of the third quarter from inside the paint and he scored 7 points in the third, including a putback with 3:00 left in the period that gave Ramapo its largest lead of the game, 28-21.
“We came in with a game plan that we had the size advantage and we wanted to play through the post. I don’t think we established ourselves well in the first half, so we went back to the drawing board,” said Vier, who is now an amazing 21-1 as a head coach in state tournament games and has not lost since the Group 3 state final in 2022. “We didn’t change, necessarily, the plays, but we just instilled in AJ that he had to sit down [in the post] and establish himself a little better. To his credit, he did it.”
It’s hard to discern for certain what the main source of the offensive struggles were for both sides, but it was probably the combination of high-level defense, the nerves associated with playing in front of an overflow crowd and also just picking a bad night to have a bad shooting night. Demarest made six 3-pointers in the first quarter of its semifinal win over Northern Highlands on Tuesday. Three days later, the Norsemen did not make any 3s in the first half and only two in the game,
Julian Gorenstein finally made Demarest’s first trey with 2:35 left in the third quarter and Marco DeCroce added a bucket in the post 40 seconds later to get the home team within 28-26, but neither team scored over the final 1:55 of the third period nor the first 52 seconds of the fourth when DeCroce’s short jumper tied the game at 28 with 7:08 left in regulation.
The game was also tied at 31 before Ramapo scored the next four points. Demarest responded with a rare easy bucket, a Zach Schweid layup on the fastbreak. Schweid, whose ability to hit the midrange jumper kept the Norsemen afloat offensively, then made a free throw and Nick Gorenstein made two more to give Demarest its last lead, 36-35, with 2:41 to play.
Freshman AJ Greig scored all 10 of his points in the second half for Ramapo, which will play Colonia in the Group 3 semifinals on Tuesday in Elizabeth.
After losing three 1,000-plus points scorers, all now playing at the next level, to graduation, it was only natural to think that Ramapo would take at least a half-a-step back. Instead, the Raiders are just two wins away from ending the season in the same spot they have the last two starting with Tuesday’s Group 3 state semifinal against North 2 champion Colonia.
“We definitely heard the noise surrounding [the graduation losses], but we didn’t care. They did not know how hard we were working. They were not at our practices,” said senior Charlie Wingfield, the three-sport standout and Wake Forest football commit. “We just blocked out all of the noise. We knew we had what it takes to get here and get this win and we want to go on and win the whole thing, ultimately.”
Demarest finished its season with a 22-6 record. The Norsemen won back-to-back divisional titles for the first time since 1986 and reached the quarterfinals of the Bergen County Jamboree for the second straight season, a first in program history. Schweid, the program’s all-time leading scorer, finished his prep career with a game-high 16 points and DeCroce, who will play football at Fordham next year, added 12. The other two field goals the Norsemen made were the 3-pointers by the Gorenstein brothers.
Hudson Beauchamp (12 points) led Ramapo in scoring and he was key in the first half when he scored 7 of the Raiders’ 15 points. Greig scored all 10 of his points after halftime, Ryan Goldman added 8, Marrah scored all 5 of his points in the final 2:18 of the game and Wingfield and Peter Keith split the other six points for Ramapo, which is now 18-10 on the season.
“I think people overlooked how good Ryan Goldman and Charlie Wingfield and Peter Keith and this senior class is. And then you bring in guys like Finn at the point and AJ Greig had a tremendous run during the playoff and really all season,” said Vier. “This team is very good in its own right. New faces, but same result.”
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