High School Basketball:
Atlantic City Defeats Lenape and Captures Back-to-Back Championships

Monday, March 6, 2006

It's not easy to win back to back titles and the Vikings from Atlantic City were looking to defeat the Lenape Indians for the South Jersey Group 4 championship. Both teams had worked their way through the bracket that included the Indians knocking off second seeded Shawnee to advance to the finals. The top seeded Vikings would start this game out running and they didn't stop until the final buzzer was sounded. The results for their efforts would be a 58-50 decision over Lenape allowing Atlantic City to repeat has champs.

Last year it was Shawnee that defeated Lenape by one point to advance to the finals. The Vikings would dominate that game. This year, the Indians won at Shawnee and were looking to pick up their second road victory at Atlantic City. The Vikings had other plans as they knew the Olympic Conference American Division champs were capable of scoring points in bunches. Atlantic City would jump out to a six point lead at the start of the second quarter, and that’s when they began to push the ball in fast break transitions. The Vikings would outscore Lenape 19-11 and led at halftime 36-22. Lenape would pull within nine points during the initial minutes of the final quarter, but the Vikings were able to keep ahead of Lenape. Frank Turner scored 16 points, Lawrence Owens added 15 and Dante Bailey chipped in 10 points for Atlantic City. Ryan Thompson finished the game with 20 points while Brian Betley added 11 and Dan Wolf had 9 points for Lenape.