The boys basketball teams from East Hampton, Bridgehampton, and Pierson (Sag Harbor) High Schools have made the postseason.
East Hampton, which won Division IV with a 13-2 record, is the second seed in the Class A bracket, behind 12-2 Kings Park, which topped Division III. Having received a first-round bye, the Bonackers are to play host at 5 p.m. Thursday to the Amityville-Hampton Bays winner. Interestingly, Amityville, which finished the league season at 8-6, defeated Kings Park both times they met.
The county Class D and Class C championship games will be played Wednesday at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, with the Greenport-Smithtown Christian winner facing off against Class D’s top seed, Bridgehampton, at 3:30, and with Port Jefferson going up against the top-seeded Pierson Whalers at 5:30.
Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees, who finished the Division V season at 14-1, behind undefeated Southampton, a Class B school, went 2-0 during the regular season with Greenport and Smithtown Christian. Pierson during the league campaign bested Port Jefferson 58-44 on Dec. 7 and 49-37 on Feb. 1.
The state’s Class D regional game is to be played at the S.S. Seward Institute in Orange County at 7 p.m. on March 7, a Tuesday. The Class C regional game is to be played at Eastport-South Manor High School at 4 p.m. on March 10. A Class D regional final may also be played that day. The Class A regional final, matching the Nassau and Suffolk County winners, is to be played on March 11 at 2 p.m. at Stony Brook University. The state Final Four tournaments are to be contested at Glens Falls over the March 17-19 weekend.
East Hampton won the Division IV championship — its first such in seven years — here on Feb. 3, defeating Westhampton Beach 66-47. It was the 11th-straight win for the Bonackers, who stumbled at Comsewogue High School four days later, a 64-46 loss that deprived them of the Class A bracket’s top seed.
The home team outshot Dan White’s squad across the board, from the outside, in the paint, and at the foul line. When it came to East Hampton it seemed as if the basket had a lid on it. Bonac’s solid inside players, Finn Byrnes and Jack Dickinson, who often wind up in double figures, managed only 6 points between them. “We didn’t play well — we were slow with our decision making, and we made too many defensive mistakes,” White said afterward, adding that those errors would be corrected in the days leading up to East Hampton’s tournament debut.
The Warriors, who defended well, put up 31 shots from beyond the arc — twice as many as East Hampton — and made good on nine of them. A 21-11 third quarter, during which East Hampton shot 3-for-15 from the floor, and which ended with the home team up 50-32, pretty much wrote finis. With his team trailing 59-39 in the fourth, White brought in his subs, who played creditably in the few minutes that remained.
In season-ending games on Feb. 7, the Killer Bees trounced the Ross School 82-48 at the Bee Hive, and Pierson defeated Southold 72-63. Luke Seltzer led the Whalers that night with 24 points, Charlie McLean had 21, and Kyle Seltzer, Luke’s younger brother, finished with 17.
