Friday was Spirit Night at Pierson (Sag Harbor) High School, and, fittingly, its basketball teams performed spiritedly in defeating Greenport-Southold, in the girls’ case, and, in the case of the boys, Center Moriches.
Down the road, East Hampton High’s resurgent girls team was celebrating Senior Night with a 62-26 rout of Smithtown Christian, a team that the Bonackers had edged 50-47 when they last met, in early December.
“We’ve improved a lot, as the scores indicate,” Samantha James, East Hampton’s second-year coach, said afterward. “We’re not only moving the ball well, but we’re finding the nets, and shooting well from the free-throw line too.”
Friday’s win — it’s been a long while since an East Hampton girls team has put up such a number — was the fourth of the season for James’s squad, which, because it is rebuilding and playing down a league, isn’t eligible for the playoffs this winter.
Both Sag Harbor teams are eyeing the playoffs. The Whaler boys, coached by Will Fujita, improved to 10-2 (10-5 over all) as a result of their 79-60 win over the Red Devils, their seventh straight. The girls, coached by Woody Kneeland, evened their record at 4-4 in besting Greenport-Southold 54-43.
Friday’s was the last home appearance of the Whaler girls, who, as of Monday, had four league games remaining, at Babylon, Port Jefferson, Shelter Island, and Smithtown Christian.
Before the Spirit Night game began, Kneeland paid tribute to his sole senior, Riley Roesel, “the kindest, most respectful, selfless, and hardest-working kid I have ever coached. . . . She’s the president of the National Honor Society, an award-winning tennis player, and she’s been accepted to all the colleges to which she applied. . . . At the beginning of the year I asked her what number she wanted. When I told her we didn’t have her favorite one, she asked what mine was. I told her what it was, and she said, ‘I’ll wear that one then, and play the season for you.’ ”
With Ani Bedini driving fearlessly to the hoop on three occasions, the Whalers were leading 10-0 before Greenport-Southold got on the scoreboard with a 3-pointer by Lily Corwin. A fourth drive by Bedini soon after made it 12-3, and after Coco Lohmiller, Pierson’s poised eighth-grade point guard, cleanly blocked a fastbreak layup, Bedini scored again, treating Pierson to a 14-3 first-quarter lead.
Kneeland’s fired-up squad continued to burn the nets in the second frame. A Corwin 3-pointer got it going, but Lohmiller followed soon after with a 3-point play, a 3-point shot of her own, and a mesmerizing layup that extended Pierson’s lead to 24-9. A free throw by Bedini, a 3-pointer by Roesel, assisted by Lohmiller, and another layup by Bedini sent the Whalers into the locker room up 30-12 at halftime.
Lohmiller and Bedini each finished with 17 points. Roesel finished with 8.
Of Lohmiller, who seems to glide up and down the court, Kneeland said, “A lot of people play basketball, some of them are basketball players. She’s a basketball player. She’s got some maturing to do, she’s only an eighth grader, but already she’s one of the top 10 scorers in the county.”
The Whaler boys were led by Charlie McLean’s 22 points that night, and the
team had controlled the game from the beginning. It wasn’t the Whaler boys’ last home game. There’s one tonight with Mattituck, and one Wednesday, versus Port Jefferson, a team it defeated 58-44 on Dec. 7. The Whalers are to end the regular season at Southold on Feb. 7.
Asked if his squad had clinched a playoff berth, Fujita wasn’t entirely sure. “But we’re close,” he said.
