Bangor finally able to subdue Wilson

Miles leads 4th-quarter surge that propels Slaters in Colonial tourney

Bangor Area High School’s seemingly rite of passage into the Colonial League boys basketball championship game over the last decade entailed a potential land mine in Tuesday’s first round.

The second-seeded Slaters (10-3) certainly were a clear favorite over visiting Wilson (5-5), the seventh seed.

But there were two factors that brought intrigue to tip off inside Bill Pensyl Gymnasium:

The ancient rivals had not met during the COVID-19-shortened regular season.

Wilson’s only victory over a plus.500 squad this season was against Salisbury, a team that dealt Bangor one of its two league losses — the other coming last week to Notre Dame and caused the Slaters to lose the tournament’s top seed.

Wilson hung around for three quarters until Bangor senior guard CJ Miles erupted for eight of his 31 points in the first four minutes of the final quarter to spark the Slaters to a 71-47 victory.

Bangor advances to Wednesday night’s semifinals, where it will host No. 3 Northwestern.

The Tigers edged defending champion Southern Lehigh 52-49 in overtime in another quarterfinal.

Sophomore guard Shamel Gibson topped Wilson with 23 points.

“We expected Wilson to compete, they always do when we play them,” said the 6-foot-1 Miles, who came into the game averaging 26.5 points per game.

“This was the first playoff game

for most of our team and we had to stay poised.”

Bangor’s other playoff-tested senior, 5-10 forward Gabe Zieba, took care of business early in the game when Wilson hustled to a 5-0 lead, causing Bangor coach Colin Kessler to remark to his bench “we’re not ready to play and they are.”

After Miles hit a 3-pointer to open Bangor’s scoring, Zieba did what he does best — battle inside for a pair of put-backs.

Later in the quarter, Zieba drove for a basket and converted another offensive rebound into a field goal for an 18-7 lead.

Zieba scored only two more points the rest of the game, but his impact was made as Wilson only closed to four points once in the second quarter and to within five points in the third quarter.

“I’m more of a scrappy player and good at getting rebounds; that’s been my role for years,” Zieba said.

Zieba also was tasked with the responsibility in the first half of guarding Wilson’s talented 6-3 junior forward Na’Shawn Jones (21 ppg) while 6-6 Dan Heald inherited the duties in the second half. Combined, they held Jones to four field goals and nine points.

“We wanted to front him in the post and keep him from getting the ball,” Zieba said.

“They are a good team and they had it so packed in around Na’Shawn,” Wilson coach Mike Glovas said. “They were able to do that because we couldn’t make anything from the outside.”

Bangor’s other defensive goal was to stay in front of Gibson.

The Slaters were not as successful as Gibson repeatedly drove through traffic to connect on acrobatic layups.

“I watched five games of Wilson’s and I was impressed with them as a team,” Kessler said. “I’m going to have nightmares the next two years trying to figure out how to stop Gibson.”