Big Win at Kings Park Notched Playoff Berth

The East Hampton High School boys basketball team had to win Monday’s game at Kings Park to make the playoffs, and it did, 57-44. 

“It was our best game of the season,” said East Hampton’s second-year coach, Dan White. “I don’t think we ever trailed.”

Joe McKee, the junior varsity coach, told White that the game reminded him of the riveting battles that former Bonac and Kings Park teams had had in the Kingsmen’s gym.

As a result, East Hampton finished the league season at 8-8, and was to have played a Class A outbracket game at the eighth seed yesterday. That game, White said during a conversation Tuesday morning, “will probably be at John Glenn.” He added that he thought Glenn (League VI’s third-place team, at 10-6) was beatable. 

The winner of yesterday’s game is to play at the top seed, presumably Amityville, which finished as the undefeated League VI champion, tomorrow.

As it had to do, following a loss at Sayville on Feb. 1, East Hampton won two of its final three, beginning with a 60-57 loss here to Westhampton Beach, which wound up as League V’s champion, at 14-2. 

“That was a good game,” White said. “We were up by 7 points at the half, and were up by 4, 5, or 6 at times in the first half of the fourth, but then our role players became tentative. It seemed as if they were afraid to fail. So, rather than take a shot when they had the opportunity, they would wait for Jack [Reese, East Hampton’s senior point guard]. That led to a dry spell, which hurt. We gave up too many points to them in the second half.” 

In contrast, he said, “our role players stepped it up at Kings Park.” In one spurt he recalled, “Max Proctor made a layup, Malachi [Miller] and Turner [Foster] assisted Chris [Stoecker] and Blad [Rodriguez Garces] on fast breaks, and Jack knocked down a pull-up jumper.”

Speaking of Rodriguez Garces, who had missed some games in the season’s second half because of academic ineligibility, “his first game back was the Westhampton game, but he didn’t start. He had his legs under him by the time we played at Kings Park. He finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds. He’s tough inside, a difference-maker.”

East Hampton’s other big man, Stoecker, who is 6-7, limited Kings Park’s big man, Andrew Bianco, to 8 points. He’s been averaging 21 per game, White said. 

Reese, who picked up two fouls in the game’s first four minutes, sat for most of the first half, at the end of which East Hampton, nevertheless, led 29-19. Reese was to finish with 13 points in the 24 minutes he played, and with 7 assists. Foster, his fellow guard, had 16 points.

“We were up by 13 with about five “We were up by 13 with about five minutes to go, and Jack kicked it up to 16 with a pull-up 3,” White said. “That was more or less it.”

Winter Track

The county’s boys winter track meet was also held Monday. 

Ben Turnbull, East Hampton’s coach, reported Tuesday morning that neither of his charges, Robert Weiss, the senior sprinter, who had the week before won a league title in the 55-meter dash, nor Ryan Fowkes, a junior who is East Hampton’s top distance runner, had qualified for the state meet that night.

Fowkes, he said, had finished fifth in the 1,000, one spot shy of making Suffolk’s distance medley relay team, outleaned at the finish by Shelter Island’s Joshua Green. Nevertheless, Fowkes’s time of 2 minutes and 38.03 seconds, a personal best for him, was a school record, Turnbull said, bettering T.J. Paradiso’s 2:38.74 set in 2016.

Weiss, who had run a 6.67 in the 55 at the league meet, despite having been ill recently, ran 6.74, good for ninth place among 18 competitors, on Monday. 

The MileSplit website lists Weiss’s 6.67 as a school record.