Golden Hawks race past Green Hornets
Paz breaks school’s all-time scoring record in victory over EPC rival
Thomas the Tank Engine, as many little kids know, is a fictional character in a TV series.
Julian “the J-Train” Thomas, is a talented junior on Bethlehem Catholic’s boys basketball team.
Saturday night, the J-Train was a high-speed locomotive that helped fuel the Golden Hawks transition game.
Thomas scored a career-high 19 points and was part of a balanced effort as Becahi ran away from Emmaus 80-67 in a much-anticipated Eastern Pennsylvania Conference showdown.
Justin Paz added 18 points and became the school’s all-time leading scorer with a 3-point shot in the third quarter.
Ryan Santana added five 3s en route to 16 points as Becahi (8-2, 5-1 EPC) used a 15-0 run to take a 15-2 lead in the first quarter and then put away the Green Hornets by scoring the first 14 points of the final stanza.
Emmaus led only once at 2-0 in suffering its first league loss and fell to 9-2 overall.
“We want to dictate the game to our opponent and tonight our pressure defense sped them up and our fast break pace on offense got the game to where we wanted,” Becahi coach Scott McClary said.
The Golden Hawks showed off their depth and the reason why many expect them to repeat as EPC and District 11 4A champs and make another long run in the state tournament.
Paz and Kyle Young (13 points, 12 rebounds) are known commodities.
But it is the play of Thomas, Santana, and others who give Becahi fans hope of more big nights like this one.
“Having great depth is a blessing and a curse,” McClary
said. “It’s a blessing because it gives us options and allows different guys to pick up the slack. But it’s hard sometimes for guys to get in a flow because it’s going to be a different guy every night. I tell them that you have to be ready for the next game.”
J-Train rolls on
McClary said Thomas was coming off a tough defensive
night against Nazareth when the Blue Eagles’ Stephon Sheard went for 30 points. He didn’t encounter a repeat.
“We give out a hard-hat award for that guy who brings the most toughness and Julian was an easy choice tonight,” McClary said. “His game was dictated on the defensive side and then he just started to attack their pressure, finish and draw fouls. He was just so tough. He went above and beyond.”
Thomas said he embraces the role of a tough guy.
“I want to bring the toughness
every night and on offense, I had a score-first mentality,” Thomas said. “I tried to read my defender, take advantage of what he was giving me and attack and get my teammates involved.”
Thomas had 12 points in the first half and added four in the fourth when Becahi put it away.
Paz’s big moment
Paz needed eight points to set the all-time Golden Hawks scoring record held by 1960 graduate Bob Bukvics at 1,485 points.
He struggled through a rough shooting night against Nazareth
Thursday night, but contributed in other ways.
More of the same happened in the first half against Emmaus when he was held to four points and just one field goal.
However, he lost his jitters in the third quarter and reached the milestone with 6:28 left in the period on a vintage stopand-pop from the top of the key.
“I had the early jitters and nothing was feeling right,” the East Stroudsburg University recruit said. “But we got up and I started to play my game and
executed. We felt like we had speed to our advantage. We needed to rebound and get the pace going on offense and get the transition buckets.”
While relieved to get the record, Paz was more pleased about the win but said: “As coach reminded us, they don’t crown champions in basketball on Jan. 5. We have a lot of games left to play.”
Green Hornets stung
Emmaus was without key guard Cameron Brooks, who is nursing an MCL injury, and played the first quarter without Mark Swedberg who was late to get the team bus and violated a team rule.
It took a while for the entire team to get going, yet the Green Hornets were back in it at 52-49 late in the third quarter and were down only 59-53 after a Zach Sabol three-point play closed the period.
But the Hornets wouldn’t score for nearly the first four minutes of the fourth quarter and Becahi pulled away.