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Moorestown boys basketball made history last season in claiming its first state championship in 60 years. But with nine seniors lost to graduation last spring, can this year’s Quakers make another run?
DECEMBER 25-31, 2019
By RYAN LAWRENCE Sports Editor
The banner was raised before their first practice and the memories of last March are still fresh. Last spring, Moorestown’s boys basketball team collected the program’s first state title since 1959. But it’s easy to forget that those Quakers didn’t reach their full potential until after Groundhog Day. Moorestown was 13-5 in the season’s first seven weeks. Good, but not great. And then Moorestown be-
RYAN LAWRENCE/South Jersey Sports Weekly
The banners in Moorestown's gym were updated prior to the season with the inclusion of '2019' under the boys basketball state title banner, the program's first since 1959. The team's ability to make a run in 2020 will depend on newcomers filling the void from a starstudded senior class that graduated in June. came great, reeling off a 15-game winning streak that culminated with a victory over Haddonfield in the Tournament of Champions three days after claiming the Group 3 state championship. It’s not a bad history lesson when Moorestown considers its
quest to make another run in 2020. The Quakers lost nine seniors from last year’s state title team to graduation, including South Jersey Player of the Year Nick Cartwright-Atkins and 1,000-point scorer and program three-point record holder Jag-
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ger Zrada. As Quakers head coach Shawn Anstey ran through a practice a few days before the team’s first game of the 201920 season, he was almost more teacher than coach, trying to get some of the younger players
FREE into the varsity flow. “The challenge is getting all of the guys who have the experience to gel with the guys who don’t,” Anstey said. “That’s a tough process. We have a sophomore group who is getting some minutes this year and they didn’t play varsity last year, so they’re adjusting to the speed, adjusting to the physicality of the game. And our offense (will be a challenge). We’re going to take our bumps and bruises, but I think by February we’ll be good to go.” Cartwright-Atkins, who was six points away from 1,000 points in his career, formed a foursome with Zrada and fellow threepoint sharpshooters, Akhil Giri and Vinnie Caprarola that scored 1,329 of Moorestown’s 1,918 points on the season. If you do the math, that’s four seniors accounting for 69 percent of the team’s total points. But don’t get too lost in the arithmetic and underestimate the potential of this year’s senior class. Kevin Muhic, the Quakers' standout soccer goalie who will continue that sport at Gettysburg, is entering his third varsity season after a strong junior season (he was second on last year’s team in rebounds and third in assists). Hayden Greer, who won state championships in basketball and golf as a junior, could help fill the threepoint shooting gap left behind by please see QUAKERS, page S4