East Catholic, Windsor advance to CCC title game
WEST HARTFORD — Last year in the CCC tournament semifinal game, East Catholic’s Samson Reilly hit four 3-pointers in the first quarter and the Eagles were off and running to an easy win over Platt.
In Tuesday’s CCC tournament semifinal, Reilly, now a senior headed to Quinnipiac, missed his first few shots and struggled to score against Newington’s suffocating defense.
But Reilly found his teammates and eventually his shot fell — including a buzzer-beating 3 to end the third quarter — and he had 23 points to help East Catholic, the defending champion, to a 67-49 win over No. 12 seed Newington at the University of Hartford.
East Catholic (21-2) will play Windsor, an 82-56 winner over Farmington in the second semifinal, on Thursday in the championship game at 7 p.m. at the University of Hartford. Windsor (20-3) handed the Eagles one of their two losses, on Feb. 16.
Braydon Jones added 18 points for East Catholic and Yayo Rodriguez had 13. Avery Mickens led Newington (13-10) with 15 points and Lebron Beckford and Josiah Sims had 12 each.
“They had a great strategy going into the game,” Reilly said. “They were doubling ball screens super hard. Their goal was to get it out of my hands and lucky for us, other guys on our team stepped up. Braydon Jones played great, had a few big dunks, Yayo played great, J.J. (Hayes) hit some big shots. Overall, it’s a great win.”
Newington, which knocked out Northwest Catholic in the quarterfinal, hung around for a long time. The Nor’easters led 15-14 after one quarter and trailed 33-29 at halftime. The Eagles went on a 12-2 run to open the third quarter and it was hard for Newington to catch up after that.
“They’re real good, well-coached, super organized,” East Catholic coach Luke Reilly said. “The thing about March and the spring is that teams get hot and they’re a hot team and they got hot at the right time.
“They really tried to take Sam away and the other guys really stepped up. I thought Sam did an awesome job recognizing that and being a distributor and making the right play.”
Last year, Windsor’s Anthony Williams watched the CCC boys basketball tournament semifinal game from home.
Williams had broken his leg while dunking during a pep rally last Feb. 17. Windsor lost to Bloomfield in the CCC tournament quarterfinals and then in state tournament quarterfinals to eventual Division II champion St. Bernard.
Tuesday night, Williams, a 6-foot-6 senior guard, was back on the court and so was Windsor. The secondseeded Warriors defeated No. 11 Farmington.
Williams had 21 points and Kaiden James had 16 for Windsor, which hit 10 3-pointers Tuesday.
Williams was just happy to be back. “This is big for me,” he said. “It’s really good to be playing for my team and not watching from home.”