Basketball
Csensits felt his team had a edge in depth coming in and that advantage grew as the game wore on. By night’s end, West was down four players. Starter Jonathan Mateo sprained his ankle early in the game and never returned. Star sophomore KJ Coles fouled out in the fourth quarter, Eryan Silva fouled out in the first overtime and Behr picked up his fifth personal in the second OT.
Pocono Mountain West was whistled for 27 fouls in all and ACCHS went to the line 35 times, making 24 of their attempts.
“It was fun to play, fun to coach in this one, at least until the second overtime when we had to have guys in the game who normally don’t play,” Panthers coach Rich Williams said. “It’s not fair to those guys. They did their best. We had some JV guys in the game at the end who haven’t played a tick of varsity all year. We got shorthanded, unfortunately, but I thought my guys battled. I’m proud of them and you know hopefully we’ll see them again at some point and it’s going to be another great game.”
West got 21 points and seven rebounds from Artis, 14 from Coles and 11 rebounds from junior standout Adrian Brito.
It was Brito who allowed the Panthers (11-3, 7-2) to gain the upper hand with four points and four rebounds in the third period, but was held to just four points over the fourth quarter and two overtimes.
“We were mixing up our matchups and I thought David Fridia defended him well early, but then when David got into foul trouble he wasn’t able to be as aggressive,” Csensits said. “And then we went to Jahrel Vigo and I thought Jahrel did a good job in key situations and we got help from other guys, so it was really a team effort. But [Brito] is a good player, Coles is really good. They have a great basketball team and they’re well-coached.”
But on this night, Vigo literally rose above the rest by soaring to the rim several times for baskets to go along with three rebounds and three steals.
If this was a midseason measuring stick, Vigo and the Vikings are definitely inching upward. They got significant contributions from unheralded players such as Cole Cook, Yariel Gonzalez and Tim Spinosa.
“We had to dig deep in the fourth quarter and we were down continuously by seven or eight points,” Vigo said. “We had to work toward it and we had to work toward it together. They’ve got some good players. Even when some of the key guys fouled out, other guys stepped up. So we had to keep on our game and knowing their tendencies and know what they were going to do. They had some chances to win the game at the buzzer, and they could have gone in, but they didn’t. We got it to double-overtime and found a way.”
ACCHS has seven games left as it tries to secure a top seed in the EPC tournament that is likely to begin Feb. 9, and six of them are against teams from the rugged EPC West, including a pair of games against Parkland, and one each against Emmaus, Northampton and Whitehall.
“We’re getting there,” Csensits said. “We’re playing good people. We played good people early and we started 2-3 and there are going to be a lot of grudge matches like this over the last three weeks of the regular season. This is what you’re going to see. There are a lot of really good basketball teams out there. It’s going to be fun.”