Eagles, Falcons advance
The battle for Albany high school basketball supremacy and bragging rights will take place for the first time in six years Tuesday night at Glens Falls.
Top-seeded Green Tech made sure of that Saturday night, overcoming a sluggish start in a 69-44 victory over Bethlehem in the Section II Class AA quarterfinals at Hudson Valley Community College.
That set up a semifinal showdown between the Eagles (17-2) and fifthseeded Albany High, which upended No. 4 Shenendehowa 63-59 earlier Saturday. The game will take place at 8 p.m at Cool Insuring Arena.
“It’s definitely a good game for the community,” Green Tech coach D.J. Jones said. “I don’t think Green Tech and Albany have met since 2016. It’s unfortunate that we got to travel all the way up to Glens Falls. I think we would sell out the MVP (Arena).
“It’s going to be a great game. Albany’s had a great year. A lot of the kids know each other, so they’ve got to put that aside and realize that if you take an L to this team, you’ve got to see them in the community.”
Dayshawn Watson scored 17 points, Zaveon Little 16 and Victor Pharr 15 to lead the offense for Tech, which shot 51 percent for the game and 60 percent in the second half. Pharr added seven assists.
“A couple of them have played on my (AAU) team,” Watson, who also had a game-high nine rebounds, said in reference to Albany’s players. “What’s interesting about them, they’ve got a lot of good bigs, too. They’ve got bigs that can stretch the floor. They got great guards too, like Isaiah (Austin). It’s going to be a good matchup.”
Before they could punch a ticket to the semis, the Eagles of Green Tech had to soar past the Eagles of Bethlehem, and that was no easy task early.
Bethlehem (7-14), the ninth seed, spotted Green Tech a 7-0 advantage, but came back to take a threepoint lead two minutes before halftime. Tech, which hadn’t played a game since Feb. 14, scored the final six points of the second quarter to go ahead 28-25 at the break.
“I felt like we had a pretty good game plan,” Bethlehem coach A.G. Irons said. “We knew we’re going to give up something, and we decided to give up the three more than anything else (Tech was 5-for-21 on 3-pointers). It’s a bigger court, and we were trying to get back on defense to make sure that we were stopping the transition stuff. We did a pretty good job of that. The second half, right away, they obviously were trying to push the ball a little bit harder.”
Green Tech outscored Bethlehem 22-7 in the third quarter, punctuated by Zhaji Williams’ layup — the team’s third shot of the possession — at the buzzer.
“It wasn’t that we played better,” Watson said of the second half, “but we played harder, played with more intensity, we were more aggressive.”
The top seeds, who had 11 steals in the game, prolonged their opponent’s misery early in the fourth quarter. On consecutive possessions, after Green Tech had turned over the ball in the front court, Pharr stole the ball back and converted layups. Little concluded an 8-0 run with a 3-pointer, extending Tech’s lead to 58-37.
“They stuck together,” said Jones, who admittedly was wary after watching second-seeded Niskayuna lose in the game immediately before his matchup. “They were unselfish and bought in on defense. We just ran our stuff in the second half. Mainly we got a lot of good shots. We focused mainly on layups and uncontested shots, and that’s good offense.”