Offense lets down Lincoln in defeat
Lions fall to Rogers; prepare for Mount in playoffs
LINCOLN — The first thing Lincoln boys basketball coach Kent Crooks wrote on the whiteboard inside his classroom after the Lions suffered a 50-47 Division III defeat to Rogers Wednesday night was “Perspective.”
The game, which ended when Octavio Brito’s corner 3-pointer with a few seconds left rimmed out, had no impact on the Lions’ Division III playoff hopes. Crooks wanted his dejected bunch to understand that what hap- pened shouldn’t stay with the team as it prepares to play No. 4 Mount St. Charles Tuesday night in the quarterfinals.
“You have to wipe the slate clean and that’s why I put the word ‘Perspective’ on the board after the game,” Crooks said from inside his classroom in the basement of the Lions’ Den. “It’s how you look at things. Do you look at the glass as half empty? Do you look at the glass as half full? Do you look at this nega- tively and get down? Or do you look at this gratefully and say ‘We’re one of the few basketball teams that has a second season.’
“Next Tuesday at Mount that’s the game I would love to have – and we have it.”
Rogers (7-11 Division III) had everything to play for. Following last week’s win over St. Patrick’s the Vikings needed to win one of its final two games to clinch a playoff spot. The Vikings wasted their first opportunity at home Wednesday night against Mount St. Charles.
Manny Hernandez scored 11 of his teamhigh 16 points in the opening half, while Edwin Connelly and Ryan Crawley picked up the scoring slack in the second half. Both Vikings scored 12 points to keep their team’s season alive for at least two more days.
The Vikings’ win moves Blackstone Valley Prep down to the No. 11 seed, which means a visit to No. 6 Central Falls later in the week.
“It’s a good group of kids and they tplayed their butts off,” Rogers coach Mike Newsome said. “We played for 32 minutes, rwhich is something we’ve struggled with all season. We’ve had a good first half and then a lackluster second half. We played 32 minrutes and we almost gave it up. The last shot wasn’t in the script, but we won.
“All I told the kids going into the game was play defense, work hard and have a tgood attitude. Our attitude was going to determine this game. I wanted them to have fun and I think they had fun. Now, we get to play the survive-and-advance game.”
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Lincoln (12-6 Division III-East) would’ve earned a share of the division title with Mount if they had defeated the Vikings for the second time this season. The Lions received a game-high 20 points from junior point guard Josh Jahnz. After scoring just five points in a low-scoring first half, Jahnz attacked the hoop to net 15 points in the second half. Declan Quinn added six and Vinny Nassi added five, but the junior left the building walking with crutches because of an ankle injury suffered in the final seconds.
The Vikings scored five straight points in the middle of the second half to turn a fourpoint lead into a 38-29 advantage with just six minutes to go. Connelly knocked down a 3-pointer to finish the run. Lincoln responded with a 4-0 run – all from the foul line – thanks to points from Jahnz and Nassi.
The deficit remained five until Crowley, a senior who knew a loss would end his career, knocked down a 3-pointer from in front of the Viking bench as the shot clock expired to put the Vikings up eight points.
“One of the big shots at the end was the 3-pointer at the buzzer because we played great defense on that possession,” Crooks said. “We had a couple of opportunities that we had that we squandered.”
Lincoln trailed by seven with a minute to go, but Jahnz made a basket and then, after a turnover, Nassi canned a 30-foot 3-pointer to close the gap to just two with 41 seconds remaining. The teams exchanged misses in the paint when Yotese Hernandez went to the line and made one free throw to put the Vikings up three with 16 seconds remaining.
The Lions created an open look on their final possession, but Brito missed the corner 3-pointer and a follow up heave from the opposite corner failed to reach the hoop.
“Give Rogers a lot of credit because they’re a team that needed to win to get in and they got it,” Crooks said. “I thought our kids battled and there’s not much you can say other than we came up short when we needed things to go right through out the game. I want Octavio Brito to want to take that shot again. That last shot didn’t lose us the game, we made too many mistakes on too many possessions earlier in the game.”