Team VCW rallies from 26 down to grab title
Team Vargas Chapman Woods, led by Hartford's Mike Anderson, stormed back to erase a 26-point deficit and secure the Greater Hartford Pro-am championship on Monday, 135-129, over Tyler Betsey and Favor Inc.
After winning game one of the best-of-three championship series on Sunday (133-126), VCW appeared to be imploding in the first half. Shots weren't falling, the offense was stagnant, and the vets couldn't stop the kids in transition. A player even packed up his bag and went home in the middle of the second quarter.
And coach Donald Herring Jr., now a three-time Hartford Pro-am champion, wasn't having any of it.
“Fighting back, down 26, they could've gave up. I was cursing them out at halftime, little teeny incident, situation, (on our bench) but they mentally stayed in the
game, they didn't check out and they battled back,” he said.
Betsey, the Gatorade Connecticut Player of the Year out of St. Thomas More and a Uconn recruiting target in the Class of 2024, helped guide Favor to a 70-48 halftime lead with help from Preston Fowler, a rising junior at East Catholic High. Point guard Anthony Ireland, who is from Waterbury and currently plays professionally in Poland, was critical in directing the fast-paced offense.
But University of New Haven
forward Devontrey Thomas flipped a switch after halftime.
“I told him he has to get going for us to be successful. Whether he's our best player or not, we play better when he plays well,” Herring said. “And in the second half it was night and day.”
“(Thomas) had 26 (points) in the third quarter, so I'll say he held us down and then I just had to carry it home in the fourth,” said Anderson, who claimed both regular season and playoff MVP awards
in addition to the top point guard award, named after the late TJ Mathis.
Anderson’s shot was unstoppable as the third quarter closed and into the fourth as VCW closed its deficit.
“We just had to calm down and play our game the way we’ve been playing the whole year,” Anderson said. “We just had to slow it down, pace ourselves, play defense and take it one possession at a time.”
Anderson finished with 36 points, 18 rebounds and seven assists, and Thomas added 34 points. Brian Moore Jr., a guard at Murray State, followed a 42-point performance in Game One with 37 on Monday.
Favor did its best to counter with former Sacred Heart guard Raheem Solomon, from Hartford, almost automatic with his stepback jumper, but ran out of steam. Solomon finished with a team-high 36 points with 10 rebounds, three assists and three steals. Betsey totaled 26 points, nine rebounds and three steals, while Ireland had 25 points, six rebounds and nine assists.
University of St. Joseph President Rhona Free watched from the upper level of the James A. Calhoun Gymnasium with Hartford Healthcare CEO Jeff Flaks and others who were instrumental in moving the event back to the Hartford area for its 25th anniversary year.
Free offered up the on-campus gym to the Pro-am for another season, and Flaks said Hartford Healthcare will be on board as the title sponsor yet again.
“(The Pro-am) brings the fun back to the game,” Moore said. “We get caught up playing Division I, playing Div. II, and it being more so a business than actually the sport we fell in love with. So it just gives that fun and that love back that we had when we were kids to carry us through the season when you know it gets tight.”