Shen boys hold off Columbia, 67-58
CLIFTONPARK, N.Y. » After a high school sports contest there can be cheers, tears and sometimes just a sigh of relief.
On Friday night that sigh came from both sides of the boys basketball tilt between Columbia and Shenendehowa as the Blue Devils played well against the No. 16 ranked Plainsmen in Suburban Council action at the Shen High School East gym.
Columbia hung around on the road for the entire contest, but could not get the lead down in the lower single digits in the fourth quarter as the Plainsmen came away with the 67- 58 league win.
“I was happy with our performance, we made a couple of errors,” Columbia coach Curtis Sankey said. “This team here you have to be very disciplined to come up here, especially in their gym to win a game. You need everything to work in your favor a little bit, get a little luck down the road here.
“They’re not going to make that many errors, when you make errors you have to go ‘hopefully we can get a turnover and come down and score,’ but like I said we knew what we were up against coming here.”
The Blue Devils were led by senior Frank Rainville’s 22 points, including 15 in the second half, much to the chagrin of Shenendehowa coach Tony Dzikas who will have a laundry list of fixes for his squad during the regents week break in contests.
“We’re not valuing the ball enough, we’re turning it over too many times and we’re not doing a great job with the scouting report, knowing who the shooters are, tagging them, picking them up, denying the ball,” Tony Dzikas said. “A kid like ( Frank) Rainville you’ve got to deny him the ball, you don’t wait until he gets it because he will shoot it right in your face. Our youth just shows so often and so much that when we come back from regents week have to start getting better.”
Senior Joey Alamprese dropped in 14 for Columbia in the loss.
A 23-point second quarter gave the Plainsmen a healthy 35-24 lead with senior Jake Reinisch dropping in eight of his game-high 23 points in the quarter, most of it from inside the paint Friday night.
“Our game plan was right where it was supposed to be,” Sankey said. “We knew what they were going to do in putting (Jake) Reinisch in a position like that because he’s scoring more two-point baskets than he is three- point baskets. That’s a plus on their side.”
The Plainsmen were also buoyed by the inside play of Luke Lavery who came up with 15 points, showing the versatility of the Shenendehowa offense.
“We just saw that we could pound it to the inside,” Luke Lavery said. “We weren’t looking for the three, we noticed their weakness and we just exploited it to the best of our ability.
“When you’re a team that can hit 18 three’s twice this year already and then pound the ball inside like that it’s very exciting.”
With the offense moving into the paint it had to be all hands on deck for the Plainsmen.
“You can just see all the different talent on this team and how versatile we are,” Lavery said. “We don’t have a big 6- 5, 215 (pound) guy, we like that we have three or four, maybe five guys that can do work inside and outside.”
After a three-game week for the Blue Devils and a non-top performance win by the Plainsmen, a week of non-contests will each team re-group for the stretch run of league play.
“Our whole purpose was to make sure we fight, stay in the game, never give up and I think we did that for the most part so I’m pretty pleased,” Sankey said. “We’ll practice, abbreviated depending on what the schedule is. The break is a break, sometimes it’s a blessing, and sometimes it can just be something that can put you in a bad situation.”
Dzikas plans to use the week to correct some bad on- court habits and regroup is squad that has only two seniors, Lucas Seyoum and Reinisch.
“It’s nice to have it off, we don’t play Tuesday, we’ve got a very good Newburgh Free Academy team coming on Saturday at the Armory,” Dzikas said. “We’ll have a good week of practice, we’ll take the weekend off, have a good week of practice and we’ve got to be more prepared and we have to figure out some stuff before Saturday otherwise they will not beat us, they’ll destroy us. We have to do a better job.”