By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
PITMAN — Woodbury High senior Jasuan Solomon says his teammate, sophomore guard Devin Williams, is the best shooter in the entire state.
He might not be wrong.
Williams was on fire Tuesday night, draining seven 3-pointers and scoring 26 points to help lead the resurgent Herd to a 60-50 victory over Pitman in the South Jersey Group 1 semifinals. The fifth-seeded Herd knocked out the defending champion and top-seeded Panthers, and now will travel to No. 3 Haddon Township on Friday at 7:30 p.m. with a chance to win their second sectional title in the last three years.
“I’m going to say this now and come March 15 it’s going to show, Devin Williams is the best shooter in New Jersey. He is a dog,” Solomon said of the Eastern Regional High transfer.
“As soon as we were warming up, I felt like my shots weren’t missing,” Williams said. “As soon as we got to the game and the first one went in, I just kept going from there. My teammates give me the energy to stay confident, and they tell me to keep shooting, even after misses.”
Williams connected on his first three long-range shots as Woodbury jumped out to a 9-3 lead that it would never relinquish. Pitman closed the gap to 11-9 late in the first quarter on a pair of free throws from Mike Fisicaro, but Williams — who had connected on four threes in the first quarter — drained two more n the first couple of minutes of the second quarter as Woodbury raced out to a 22-11 lead.
Pitman (21-7, 10-0 Tri-County Classic), led by star guard and 2,000-point scorer Elijah Crispin, were forced to play catch-up the entire rest of the way. The closest the Panthers got in the second half was when Fisicaro found Aidan Stranahan in transition to cut the deficit to 33-24, but on Woodbury’s next possession Williams drained another 3-pointer to push the lead up to 36-24. Crispin finished with a game-high 27 points and completed his impressive career with 2,097 points and more than 500 assists.
The Panthers probably knew their comeback effort was doomed when Williams somehow made a fallaway 3-pointer from beyond NBA range at the third-quarter buzzer, giving the Herd a commanding 42-28 lead.
“Devin is a worker. He comes in and knows he’s going to get face guarded, but he trusts in our game plans and he has so much confidence. It’s not cocky confidence, he’s a very humble kid,” said Woodbury coach Mark Di Rugeris Jr. “I don’t know why people don’t face guard him all game because when he’s open he can knock them down.”
Woodbury (16-14, 7-3 Colonial Liberty) got a huge boost from junior Jaden Farmer, who had his best game of the season with 18 points and 13 rebounds. He was a force all night in the paint and Pitman had no way to stop him.
“I tell him all the time that he’s a dog, and he responded today,” Solomon said. “I’m truly happy for him, but it doesn’t stop here. We have a lot of basketball left and a lot more of what he did.”
“He’s our best rebounder. He might be one of the best rebounders in Woodbury history,” Williams added. “Jasuan, Jaden and Mark (Koszowski, 9 rebounds) gave us a big boost. To be honest, I don’t know how (Farmer) does it. He can grab rebounds any time he wants.”
“He’s a kid who played at Lindenwold last year and was a dynamic scorer on that team, and he had to find his way,” Di Rugeris Jr. said. “His ability to get skinny and be strong at the rim at the same time makes him successful. He’s stronger than he thinks he is, we just have to keep inspiring him and motivating him. He had 13 rebounds today and that was phenomenal. It’s the second time he’s been in double-digit rebounds all season, when we needed it the most. I’m super proud of him.”
Woodbury was 6-11 at one point this season, but the Herd have won four straight and 10 of their last 13 games.
“We’re hot right now. We had a long road. I put together our out-of-conference schedule on purpose. We played some high level teams — some top teams in the state, top teams in Pennsylvania,” Di Rugeris Jr. said. “We faced a long road to get here, but I knew if we played these tough teams and got into a lot of rock fights and scraps, we were going to be tested. And that showed here. Our defense was phenomenal, and our offensive patience was phenomenal, too. We made the right play all the time, we found the high-low instead of shooting threes all the time, like we did earlier in the year. I’m proud of this group, but we’re not done yet.”
WHAT’S NEXT: No. 5 Woodbury at No. 3 Haddon Township in the South Jersey Group 1 championship, Friday, 7:30 p.m. Pitman’s season is complete.
