TOMS RIVER — Wall boys basketball coach Bob Klatt decided he was going to ride his five senior starters for the first 10 minutes of Sunday’s Kevin Williams Christmas Classic at RWJBarnabas Health Arena in a game that had extra meaning for those five program staples even beyond a chance to play for the Jim Runhke Bracket championship on Tuesday.
Even with a senior-loaded team, none of the players on Wall’s current team were alive the last time their Crimson Knights beat Manasquan in a boys basketball game and the most recent defeat at the hands of the Warriors ended Wall’s season in the 2025 NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II semifinals.
For the first 16 minutes of Sunday’s rivalry tilt, Wall took two decades of frustration out on Manasquan and buried the Warriors with a dominant defensive effort that ended with a 40-20 Crimson Knights victory to snap a drought vs. Manasquan that dates back to at least the 2006-07 season.
“It was disappointing last year how it ended,” Wall senior point guard Liam Killea said. “It fueled us this year.
“I don’t know what the streak was but we wanted to go after them,” said Klatt, now in his seventh season as Wall’s head coach. “We believe in ourselves and we know we can do it. The way we started, that just built the confidence, and they were confident going in.”
Manasquan’s win over Wall in last year’s sectional semifinals improved the Warriors to 23-0 vs. their nearby rival since Andrew Bilodeau became the Manasquan head coach in 2008-09. On Tuesday, Wall supplanted its notorious 23-0 with a notorious 21-0 for Manasquan.
“We were confident because we had a chip on our shoulder from last year,” Killea said. “Also, I think our defense is really, really good, so we felt like we had everything we could ask for going up against these guys.”
Wall held Manasquan scoreless for the first 13:48 of the game, during which time the Crimson Knights built a 21-0 lead on the defending Group II champion and WOBM Christmas Classic champion. Sophomore Sean Bilodeau’s two free throws with 2:12 left in the second quarter ended the drought and sophomore Kennedy Larned’s putback with exactly a minute to go marked Manasquan’s first and only field goal of the second half. When the teams reached halftime, Manasquan was 1-for-21 from the field against Wall’s defense.
“We ran the seniors for ten minutes and they shut them out for 10 minutes,” Klatt said. “We talked at practice about defense, controlling the boards and they did a great job there. Offensively, we were so patient.”
“Against them, you really have to get off to a good start,” Killea said. “We knew it was going to be a dog fight the whole way and we wanted to make sure we took advantage.
“We felt like it could have been 40-0 and I wish it had been. We knew they were eventually going to score and we wanted to contain them.”
Killea led Wall with 15 points, while classmate Brian McKenna threw in 10 points and eight rebounds for the Crimson Knights.
During the first three minutes of the game, Wall buried its first four three-point attempts, with senior Joey Ambrozy draining two of them and fellow seniors Jake DeBrito and Dan Hennessy hitting one apiece. McKenna, Killea and Hennessy have been primary sources of scoring over the last two seasons, so watching Ambrozy and DeBrito coming out firing and hitting was an emotional lift for the team as a whole.
“When Joey hit the first three, I had a really good feeling about the game,” Killea said. “When he hit the second one, I just thought, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to win this game.’
“We were joking about that before the game,” Klatt said. “They were going to worry about Brian and Joey is going to come out and bang a couple jumpers and then you’re going to have to worry about Joey. Then he bangs two threes.
“This is what I keep saying: we are a team. Somebody is going to step up every single night. We might play seven guys one night, we might play nine. Whoever is playing well is going to stay on the court.”
By the end of the first half, Wall was in total control with a lead of 23-4, but the Crimson Knights did not make it through the game without one uneasy moment. Manasquan outscored Wall, 10-2, during the first 5:30 of the third quarter to draw within 25-14 against an opponent that had lost its rhythm on offense. During a timeout, Wall reset and responded with a 7-0 run that ran the lead back up to 32-14 by the final minute of the third quarter.
“We talked about how we can’t just stall the clock,” Killea said. “We talked about how we needed to attack and that we turned the ball over because we didn’t shoot the ball.”
“In the Ocean game (46-39 Wall win), he struggled and we had to sit down and talk,” Klatt said. “He was confused about what I wanted from him. I think he thought I needed him to be more offensive, but I need him to be the coach on the floor. He can controls everybody, he gets everybody the ball and that’s what he did tonight.”
Manasquan mixed their defensive looks against Wall, but consistently face-guarded McKenna. That limited McKenna to two points in the first half, but he came back with eight in the second half to help Wall close out the victory.
“We were playing not to lose instead of just going after them,” Klatt said. “We practice against the zone every single day because the way we play, people are going to say, ‘We’ve got to slow them down.’ That’s been our Achilles heel for the last couple years and I have to give (Ranney coach) Tahj Holden the credit for that. I used to coach Tahj, so we talked about zone offenses and I stole a couple of things from him that we were able to use to help us.”
Sean Bilodeau led Manasquan with seven points with 5-for-5 shooting from the free-throw line. The Warriors also welcomed back 6-foot-7 junior forward and returning starter Logan Cleveland back into the lineup. Cleveland missed the first four games of the year with an ankle injury and scored one point on Sunday while coming off the bench.
Wall won the Steve Gepp Bracket championship during its 21-win season last year and this season, the Crimson Knights moved up to the Jim Ruhnke Bracket — home to the top eight seeds in the Kevin Williams Christmas Classic. It was Wall’s only championship of any kind at the Kevin Williams/WOBM Christmas Classic and the Crimson Knights will have a chance to win back-to-back championships Tuesday against No. 3 Freehold Township on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Toms River.
“I told them we’ve got one more game,” Klatt said. “I don’t want them to think this is the championship. It’s only four games, we’ve got a long way to go, but to beat a team like (Manasquan), to beat (Red Bank Catholic), it should give us confidence.”