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They came into the tournament as the only junior varsity squad in a 16-team field, but by the end of the Cooper Yeshiva High School Invitational in Memphis, Tenn., Moshe Aaron Yeshiva High School's boy's basketball team left a lasting impression.

The South River school, which does not have a varsity team, compiled a 1-3 record from Dec. 17-20 at the Cooper Invitational, which brought together yeshiva teams from New York, Miami, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, among other cities. But the Jaguars won't soon forget the one victory -- a 58-57 decision over Philadelphia's Stern Hebrew High School.

Tournament Director Josh Kahane admired the gritty effort of MAYHS' younger players, as well as the class they showed off the court.

"I can imagine that you had concerns about [your younger players'] ability to compete and what the experience might be like for them if they could not," Kahane wrote in a letter to Rabbi Dovid Komet, MAYHS principal. "Having personally watched two of their games, I can now tell you they could and DID; winning one and playing very competitively in two others. They should be quite proud of their showing on the court."

"Through their enthusiastic participation in the programming, friendly disposition, and incredibly fine middos (character traits), your students reinforced within ours what being a young, modern, frum young person is all about," Kahane wrote.

MAYHS player Moshe Siegelman of Highland Park said beating a varsity team "gave us the confidence that we could actually play in these tournaments." Dani Tutnauer of East Brunswick said the win gives the team, currently 3-2 in the Metropolitan Jewish Day School Basketball League (MJDSBL), the feeling that it can compete with anyone.

"We showed that even though we were a junior varsity team, we weren't going to let teams just step all over us," Tutnauer said.

Trying to hold a lead down the stretch of a game, which MAYHS had to do against Stern, was something the team hadn't experienced before, since its MJDSBL games so far have been lopsided wins or losses, explained Jeremy Felder, who scored 30 points in the victory.

"We were never in a situation where we had to control the game with two minutes left, and we had to burn time," Felder said.

Rabbi Avraham Krawiec, dean of students, went with the team to Memphis and said, "I was equally proud of our guys off the court as I was proud of them on the court, because of how well they represented our school and what we stand for."

Caught up in the basketball action and tournament programming, the group of 11 players didn't have much time to tour Memphis, though a tour guide on their way from the airport to the hotel did educate them on the city and of its claims to fame -- barbeque and blues music. For most of the students, it was their first trip to the South.

By spending Shabbat in Memphis, the group also witnessed a large Orthodox Jewish community that some players didn't know existed. "I had no idea," Tutnauer said of Memphis' significant Orthodox community. "I was surprised."