Kudos to the Ewing High School boys’ basketball team for being one of the four teams to earn its way into Mercer County Basketball Tournament finals. Hey, the Blue Devils even have good reason that they can’t play the championship game on Monday: they have a state-tournament game standing in the way of their MCT final against the Pennington School, the defending champion.

The chaos that the girls’ basketball event has encountered isn’t so cut and dry, as Monday’s potential final between the top-seeded teams, Trenton High School and Trenton Catholic Academy, apparently won’t come off. Hurt feelings and bad blood continue to linger between Trenton High coach Reggie Murray and Trenton Catholic Academy coach Khaliq Lewis-El, including a reported confrontation between the two at the semifinals Saturday at Mercer County Community College. Once again, it’s affecting the student-athletes, who want nothing more than the chance to compete against each other.

Murray dropped a bomb on the MCT on semifinal day by indicating his team will not play in the MCT’s snow-delayed final against TCA because it has to prepare for a New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association tournament game against East Brunswick on Tuesday. Trenton is the sectional’s No. 1 seed and East Brunswick is 16th-seeded - a likely blowout - and the Tornadoes have only known of this matchup for two weeks. It’s hard to believe Murray hasn’t been preparing his team prior to Monday. Many teams in many sports have been in this position in the past and played county and state tournaments and championship-determining regular-season games on consecutive days without trouble. What’s different with Trenton basketball?

It seems to go back to Trenton losing to TCA eats a lot more at Murray than TCA losing to Trenton eats at Lewis-El. There has been attempts at getting Trenton and TCA on the court together in recent years (like the Prime Time Shootout), and Murray has been the excuse-maker.

The problem with Murray balking at playing Monday is that Trenton High is a part of the MCT association and should abide by the tournament committee’s need to reschedule games based on postponements, like the ones the MCT had on Thursday and Friday. Trenton High needs to step up and tell Murray that he’s not bigger than the tournament and needs to play this game. If not, maybe the MCT should schedule the final, and if TCA is there and Trenton isn’t, then the Tornadoes will forfeit the game.

Of course, this solution could just hurt the Trenton girls more. But Trenton High athletics needs to be bigger than Reggie Murray and play the game.

UPDATE: Fortunately, Trenton High athletic director Larry Parker pushed forward with playing the MCT final Monday night. TCA won a 49-48 thriller, handing Trenton its first loss of the season.

Follow Craig Haley's Mercer County sports columns on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CraigHaley and on the Hamiltonspace.com page of Facebook.