Coaches Have Hopes For Their Hoop Teams
Ron White, a national junior college champion when he went a while ago to Suffolk Community College-Selden, has been told by his former coach there, Rich Wrase, not to worry when it comes to the high school coaching career upon which he recently embarked.
As of Monday, Bridgehampton, which was to have played at Center Moriches Tuesday and was to have played host to Stony Brook yesterday, was 0-4 in nonleague games.
“Coach Wrase said the first game he ever coached at Eastport his team lost something like 125 to 37 to the Killer Bees, and that in his first two years his record was 2-34,” White said, with a smile, following Bridgehampton’s 63-48 nonleague loss to McGann-Mercy at the Bee Hive on Dec. 13.
Bee fans were pulling for White to get his first varsity win that evening — and, at one point, early in the third quarter, the game did seem winnable, with the Bees trailing 33-31 after J.P. Harding had muscled his way to a basket underneath.
The Riverhead team (whose coach, Kevin O’Halloran, is well familiar with Bridgehampton’s undersize gym) pulled away after that, however, taking advantage of the Bees’ uncharacteristic tentative play, and looking, if truth be told, more like the Killer Bees of old than the Bees themselves.
Of Bridgehampton’s starters, only J.P. Harding, who recently underwent an appendectomy, seemed fueled by the competitive fire that has been the hallmark of Bridgehampton basketball for so many years.
It was Mercy, meanwhile, that banged the boards, sliced and diced, and hawked the ball in Killer Bee fashion, creating numerous turnovers. Mercy got off 60 shots, according to one count, Bridgehampton, 42, which was indicative.
“What we need is consistency,” White said afterward. “We’re putting them in the right positions. . . .”
Emotion too. Perhaps a win will help instill that.
“They’ve got to start taking it more personal — they’ve got to take it home,” the coach added.
When it came to the scoring, Mercy’s Allan Zilnicki led the way, with 27 points. His teammates Matt Chilicki (17) and John Venesina (13) also finished in double figures.
For Bridgehampton, Elijah White, the sophomore point guard, had 16, and Harding and William Walker each had 12.
The Bees lost 63-53 at Port Jefferson Friday.
As for East Hampton, its second-year coach, Dan White, said during a Biddy basketball practice he was overseeing Saturday morning at the John M. Marshall Elementary School that he was tired of being told his players were fun to watch. “What I want to do is win,” he said, with a sigh.
East Hampton lost 70-69 in the last seconds at Islip last Thursday, a game it played without the services of one of its key inside players, Bladimir Rodriguez Garces, who had been ruled academically ineligible.
White said that Chris Stoecker, his 6-foot-8-inch center, got into foul trouble toward the end of third period, at which point he sat him, until the beginning of the final quarter.
“We were up by 12 at one point in the third,” White said, adding that “it was back and forth in the fourth. . . . We were up by one with 13 seconds left. They came up with the ball in a chaotic scrum after we had stolen it, and, with four seconds left, one of their guys, with hands in his face — Max Proctor’s and Jack Reese’s — tossed up a high floater from about eight feet out that banked in.”
The good news was that Turner Foster finished with 20 points, 12 of them the result of 3-pointers. Reese, the hard-playing point guard, had 20 as well. Malachi Miller had 10, Stoecker, 9, Proctor, 8, and Jeremy Vizcaino, 2.
More good news insofar as White is concerned was the fact that Rodriguez Garces had been cleared to play as of Saturday.
“What killed us at Islip,” he added, “was our foul shooting. We went 6-for-18 from the line. . . . You should make 70 to 80 percent of your foul shots, not 33.”
East Hampton, whose overall record was 2-2 as of Monday, was to have played Harborfields in its league opener at home Tuesday. The Bonackers are to play at Hauppauge this evening.