‘Burgh run ends in state quarters
By Sam Blum TROY, N.Y. >> It might have been a storybook season for Lansingburgh. The first section title in an even 50 years. A buzzer-beat win to get them there. A defeat of Section 10 champion Massen on Wednesday. It was a storybook year, but there will be no happily ever after. A Buddy Boeheim-led Jamesville-Dewitt team ended Lansingburgh’s season on Saturday with a 65-62 defeat at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse.
The Knights finish the season at 21-4, the most successful in program history. Head coach Marc Fruscio always focused on the big picture with his team, telling them they could leave their mark on the community. That’s what they did, they just won’t be the final team left standing in New York State.
“My kids have played hard all year,” Fruscio said. They haven’t quit in any game that we’ve had. We’ve been down double digits before, we were down double digits again today. My kids should be extremely proud, but I know they’re not right now. They won’t be tomorrow or even a week from now. But in 10 or 15 years, they can look back at this and it’s one of the greatest times of their life.”
Lansingburgh trailed much of the game. And that was thanks to Boehiem, the son of Hall of Fame Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim. He scored 40 points. Lansingburgh had a one point lead after the first quarter, but trailed by five at halftime, despite 16 points from Davonte Jones before the break. The Knights hit buzzer beaters at the end of the second and third quarter, the first a 3-pointer from Jones. But in the fourth, they fell behind by as many as 10, and a late push to cut it to two points wasn’t enough.
Lansingburgh was down by eight with one minute to play, but had a 3-pointer from Tyler Rhoden, the team’s best 3-point shooter to tie the game. The open look missed, the buzzer sounded, and the season ended.
“We couldn’t ask for anything more,” Jones, a senior captain, said. “We got a shot for our best shooter and it just didn’t fall. My high school career is really over. It actually hit me when the clock hit triple zeroes.”
Fruscio used a lot of different defenses on Boeheim, who scored in a multitude of ways. They tried to double-team him. They tried putting a smaller player on him, a bigger player on him.
“I think we exhausted all our options,” Fruscio said. “Every time we threw something different at him, he made a play.”
Jamesville-Dewitt almost gave the game away at the end. Fruscio had preached to his team, down eight with only seconds on the clock, that things could still bounce their way. That’s exactly what happened.
But the final shot didn’t bounce their way. And that’s what, in the short term, will be remembered. But not the long term.
“It means a lot,” Jones said. “The season isn’t a failure. We did what ‘Burgh teams haven’t done in a long time. It sucks that’s finally over, but we did accomplish a lot.”