Dominguez dominating
Sophomore scores 48 points Friday night
A little of this, a little of that …
• The high-school basketball season is still in the infant stage, yet we may already have a winner for “best single game performance.”
You may have heard that Tolman sophomore Dyondre Dominguez went off for an eyepopping 48 points in last Friday’s 80-66 win over Moses Brown at Donaldson Gymnasium. That’s a big number no matter how you slice it and probably would have been even gaudier had the 6-7 Dominguez not missed nine free throws.
Per Tigers head coach Bill Coughlin, Dominguez took off to another stratosphere after seeing his first few shots drop. It soon became apparent there was very little anyone wearing a Quaker uniform could do to combat this tour de force on the hardwood.
“The basket became 10 feet wider to him,” Coughlin said. “Getting going early allowed him to get into a groove.”
What was perhaps the best bit of news concerning the banner night enjoyed by Dominguez was that his offensive repertoire was akin to a Swiss army knife. Not only did Dominguez have the stroke from distance working – he drained six 3-pointers – but he also had the mid-range game going and kept forcing the issue enough to attempt 23 free throws.
“He was being very aggressive and taking good shots,” Coughlin said.
Sprinkling in the mid-range component stemmed from a tip Dominguez received.
“We talked in the huddle that (Moses Brown) was setting up to try to get a charge on him,” Coughlin said. “It was pointed out to Dyondre that if he stopped at 15 or 18 feet and elevated, that shot is not getting blocked.”
It wasn’t until after the final buzzer when Dominguez received word that he had torched the netting at such a prodigious clip. Coughlin himself needed verification.
“Myself and (Tolman athletic director) Frank Laliberte looked at the scorebook and thought it was a misprint,” Coughlin said. “It wasn’t like he had them all within a cluster of time. He was balanced throughout the game.”
The noteworthy night that Dominguez enjoyed came following the finals of the Donaldson-Lynch Tournament where he struggled to get into a shooting rhythm but still managed to produce 13 points in a 36-26 loss to St. Raphael. One of the conversations that Coughlin had with his 16-year-old star centered around the comments that Providence head coach Ed Cooley made about Rodney Bullock following the Friars’ 63-60 win over URI earlier this month.
“Dyondre can impact the game in a lot of ways, but it’s important to enjoy it,” Coughlin said. “A lot of people would love to have the ability he has.”
Even though there’s still plenty of season ahead, the outburst by Dominguez may have raised the bar to an unreachable level. For those seeking to notch better than 48 points, best of luck.
• The Mount St. Charles girls basketball team will be spending Christmas break in Orlando, Fla., competing in the KSA Events Holiday Basketball Tournament. It’s a threegame jaunt that first took shape two Septembers ago when information crossed the desk of head coach Ray Leveille.
“Knowing that going into (the 2015-16 season) that I wasn’t going to have a senior on the team, it gave me two years to plan it out,” Leveille said. “The parents were onboard last November and the administration not long after.”
The Mount travel party includes 12 varsity members, Leveille, an assistant coach and four parents. The Mounties are scheduled to leave the morning after Christmas and will be down there for six days, five of which will be spent at the various Disney theme parks.
MSC will compete out of KSA’s “Pink Bracket” with the first game on Dec. 27 at 10:15 a.m. against Ecole Secondarie of Ontario, Canada. All tourney contests will take place ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex.
• A search committee featuring two highranked individuals at Bryant University has taken the lead in the quest to find the school’s next football head coach. The committee is comprised of Ron Machtley (Bryant president) and Bill Smith (athletic director).
At this stage, they’re in the process of looking for the best available candidates to take the post previously held by Marty Fine, who resigned last month after 13 seasons on the sidelines in Smithfield.
• Good PR move by the NFL for not fining Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott after the rookie decided to celebrate a touchdown Sunday night by jumping into a mammoth Salvation Army kettle.
The NFL has taken a ton of hits to its brand this calendar year – far too many to list here. Bottom line, the last thing the league office needed right before the holidays was to throw a flag at a situation that in turn placed the Salvation Army in an uncomfortable light.
On the positive side, maybe Elliott’s theatrics will spur folks to throw donations into the pot rather than walk past it.