FREEHOLD, N.J. – Playing without their best scorer in Jennifer Galamb, the Toms River North Girls basketball team (2-5) fell on the road to Freehold Township (8-0) 66-39 Wednesday. Without Galamb, who missed the game with a knee injury, the Mariners had no match for Freehold's Ashley Stenftennagel and Michelle Johnston who had 18 and 15 points respectively. Kendall Kauffman led Toms River with 21 points.

"Their ability to shoot was ridiculous today," Toms River North head Coach Vicki Guarneri said. "They just have five, six girls that can all shoot the ball. It was very impressive to watch."

"It was a very good offensive game, very team oriented offensive game," Freehold Township head Coach John Sciarappa said afterwards.

It was an offensive explosion from the beginning. Down 2-1, Johnston hit a three pointer to begin an 8-0 run to quickly make the score 9-2 Patriots. That was the only time Freehold would trail all game. Behind nine of Stenftennagel's 18, they ended the first quarter up 20-8, finishing the quarter on an 11-4 run.

Seemingly in control of the game Sciarappa quickly called a timeout after Toms River's Christina Gerew scored the first basket of the second quarter. He was livid. The reason: poor defense.

"We have a philosophy on how we play defense. It's a very simple concept – it's different from a lot of people. And we know it. But you put the kids on the court and they just resort to whatever they want to do."

He would continue preaching defense to his girls for the rest of the contest, but their offense wouldn't have to make him sweat the outcome. They entered halftime ahead by 15, with a Madison Dunn three right before the buzzer punctuating the offensive explosion.

Freehold continued to put up points in the third quarter. Seemingly trading off baskets between Stefanie Martinez and Johnston, they opened the third on a 12-2 run, and finished it up 19, 49-20.

The fourth quarter also went the Patriots way, with Freehold outscoring Toms River 17-9 in the final period to get the 66-39 victory.

Looking forward for Toms River North, their focus will be on moving forward.

"We gotta work on filling [Galamb's role] and someone stepping in to pick up the scoring in that sense because that's what we're lacking," Guarneri said. "But we're looking to our conference play and we're excited to go into our conference on Friday and try and put the pieces together a little bit."