Give And Take
Tri-Valley Lets Its First Half Lead Dissipate But Takes Game Back In Final 30-Second Heroics; Bears Improve To 2-0 As Family’s Late Mistakes Prove Fatal; Lady Bears Garner Season-Opening Win With Dominance of Lady Falcons
Girls: Tri-Valley 62, Family Foundation School 16
Boys-Tri-Valey 49, Family Foundation School 45
By RICHARD A. ROSS
Scenes from Tri-Valley's boys and girls wins over Family Foundation School (Clockwise) Tri-Valley junior Cody Exner scores after receiving a floor-length pass to give the Bears a 45-43 lead in the game's waning minutes. The Falcons would soon tie it up again but the Bears would have the last word. The Bears celebrate and show some love after the dramatic win. For a team that never reached .500 a year ago, being 2-0 is new and exciting territory. Family's Max Wilkey is guarded by T-V's James Pugh. Both would have key roles in the game. Wilkey scored a game-high 17 points; Pugh had 11 but also had a key steal of an inbounds pass which helped to seal the win. T-V senior Erin Smith scores two of her nine points in the Lady Bears' season opening win. They begin their quest to defend their Section Nine title. Greg Swarthout was questionable to play in this game but when he did it was huge , especially with this go-ahead shot to give his team the lead they would never again relinquish. Sabrena Smith fires away as part of her game-high 11 point output for the 1-0 Lady Bears.
GRAHAMSVILLE, NY—In the fast and furious world of basketball it’s a matter of give and take. You give everything you have in the way of offensive execution by running your sets, making the extra pass and working for the best shot.
Likewise, you try to use hustle, focus and smarts on defense to take away the other team’s best chances to score… and better yet, to force turnovers which can lead to fast transition buckets the other way. Teams that execute well in these phases of the game win more often than not, while those that falter in vital aspects minimize their chances for victory.
With his electrifying sister Jakki now gone and playing at college, it's James Pugh's turn to light it up and carry on the family tradition. Here he rises to the occasion with two of his 11 points on the night. He had six in the first quarter including this layup.
And so it was that Tri-Valley and Family went all out to try and deploy their best offensive and defensive verve in a non-league clash in the Bears’ den on December 16. The season is quite young, but wins for both teams are preciously sought in the shortened world of an 18-game season, so this figured to be a battle to the finish.
It was that and more.
It’s remarkable how many games of basketball come down to the final seconds. Coaches of course realize this as they watch their teams miss shots, commit costly fouls or lose possession of the rock during the course of games.
They understand that while those events pass by in a New York minute, that such miscues can come back to haunt a team in a game that is apt to be decided by a single basket or late second free throws.
That’s what time outs are for as coaches like Tri-Valley wizard Brian Tingley and visiting Family Coach Larry Patrisso tried to hurriedly school their players on ways to handle the coming minutes based on their savvy observations of what had worked and what hadn’t.
For the Class C Tri-Valley Bears, a team that wasn’t able to muster a .500 record last year, this home clash against the Class D Family Falcons would prove to be an opportunity to both give and take as they gave Family a healthy dose of speed and steals and in the fourth quarter even gave them the lead,before finally taking away the Falcon’s most sought-after prize, namely a late upset win.
That victory was there for the taking for either squad as Family had whittled down Tri-Valley’s 32-22 halftime lead in the third quarter by outscoring the Bears 13-8 in that stanza to trail by a mere five at 40-35 entering the final frame.
In that final eight minutes, the home fans looked on with apprehension as they watched the pitched battle that seemed to hinge on each and every possession.
Tri-Valley has some big players this year but all but one of them are new to the varsity realm. That means that bigs like Family's Max Wilkey are a threat. Big red had 17 in this one.
Here’s a quick blow by blow description of the game’s dramatic concluding minutes.. With a little over five minutes to go Family scored to make it 43-39. The Bears turned it over with an errant pass in the middle before Family’s Max Wilkey and T-V’s Greg Swarthout took turns missing close-in shots.
Then Family’s Lucas Maas buried one to cut the lead to 43-41 with 4:16 remaining. Another errant T-V pass gave the Falcons a chance to tie but a foul by Family’s Jon Jziguiedo gave the Bears the ball back with 3:45. A missed three by the Bears and a Falcon rebound. As T-V’s Cody Exner closely guarded Family’s Bryan Lehrman, he slipped and Lehrman went by him to score the tying bucket with 3:17 to go. The teams were now knotted at 43-all.
The Bears had a chance to go ahead from the stripe as Dave Donovan was fouled but he missed both and Family came down with the rebound. The clock now read 2:58 as Tingley called a time out to dial up a play.
Exner received a floor-length pass and scored easily to make it 45-43. Wilkey fired up a three that missed at the other end. Exner was nearly tied up on the floor and Tingley alertly called a time out to avoid the possession arrow which was pointed in the Falcons’ favor.
Family committed another foul to give the Bears the ball back but a quick steal of T-V’s inbounds pass led to a bucket by Maas as the Falcons tied it up again at 45-all with 1:34 to go.
In the crucible of moments like this, experience is a vital resource, something Family lacks with only two returning players, one of which hardly saw any time a year ago. To steal this win, Family was going to need to avoid any costly mistakes.
Hustle, flow and dive for a loose ball. That's the modus operandi for T-V's speedy and gritty Shatik Smith (left) and James Pugh as they tie up Family's Bryan Lehrman.
Family had fouls to give and Wilkey used one of them as the Bears then got set to inbound it again at 45-all. Greg Swarthout drove right through the lane for an electrifying bucket which gave the Bears a 47-45 lead with..
At the other end of the floor, the Falcons needed to deploy patience but a hurried Family trey missed the mark.
After the Bears missed a layup, Patrisso called a time out and the Falcons got set to inbound the ball with 42.9 seconds. Once again, inexperience proved costly as they committed a backcourt violation for the deadly turnover.
Swarthout was fouled and went to the line for a one-and-one. He missed , T-V got the rebound but promptly turned it right back to Family with 17.7 seconds to go. Family needed to come the length of the floor but Pugh stole the ball right out of the hands of Lehrman as he got set to inbound the rock.
A pair of free throws by James Pugh would ice the game at 49-45.
Dialing it back to the outset of the game, Wilkey won the opening tip against Conor Walsh. Family’s Jon Izguideo scored the first points of the game which would be part of Family’s nine-point output in the first quarter. They got a three-pointer from Lehrman and two points apiece from Wilkey and Tarek Mhich.
While the focus of this story is on the boys game, the girls were busy taking care of business early on. Here Mareena DiMilia scores two of her seven points in the season-opening win as the Lady Bears look to defend their Section Nine crown. DiMilia and company figure to be right in the mix despite the graduation of standout Jakki Pugh.
That wasn’t enough to keep pace with the amped-up Bears who posted 17 in the stanza including a pair of treys from Exner, one from Jesus Lozada and six points from Pugh. Sophomore tall tree Alex Brown added a bucket to the mix as the Bears led 17-9 at the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter was far more even with the Bears outscoring Family 15-13 in the stanza. A trey by Pugh was added to buckets from Shatik Smith, Brown, Exner and Swarthout. Family profited from ten from Wilkey to go along with a bucket and a free throw from Mhich.
In the third quarter, it was Family’s turn to overpower their hosts as they outdistanced Tri-Valley 13-8 in the period to close within five at 40-35. To that end they got a trey from Wilkey and buckets from Mhich, Stepan Rudowicz and four points from Mdich.
Tri-Valley did not meet its pregame goal of committing ten turnovers or fewer. They had 15 on the night, including just four in the first half. They induced 24 on the part of Family. The Bears (2-0) were two-for-six from the stripe (33.3%), while Family was an impressive seven-for-eight (87.5%).
Wilkey led all scorers with 17. Mhich had 11 for Family. Exner led T-V with 16 points. He had four of T-V’s seven three-pointers on the night. Pugh posted 11 points including two from beyond the arc.
Patrisso knew his team had just given one away. “In the game’s situations, you’ve got to know what to do when the game is on the line.” This was the second game for the Family Foundation School. It lost its opener to Chapel Field.
“We played well but the end of the game situations like throwing the ball away with a few seconds left, or not knowing how to run a press breaker when they’re trying to trap you and not knowing what to do with a rebound right under the basket when the line is right open. Instead of dribbling it straight up the court, a pass is made instead. That’s unselfish, but unwise,” he noted.
Family has only one senior on the team and two players who return from a year ago, but neither of the two were starters. Consequently, there’s a lot of learning to do. We have no JV team and no summer league. We only get together as of November 14 and we have to put it all together as quickly as we can,” he added.
Tingley offered up his take on things thusly, “I thought the key to the game was the steals at the end,” thinking particularly about Pugh’s theft of the inbound pass right out of Lehrman’s hands. “We were trying to stop them and make them take some time off the clock. It helped having Greg (Swarthout) out there. A few days ago we didn’t know if he was going to be playing.”
A trio of weapons in the Bears' arsenal: If T-V is to keep up its winning ways and get to the sectionals, something they weren't able to do last year, they'll need James Pugh, Cody Exner and Conor Walsh to lead the charge. Thus far, they seem more than up to the task.
Tingley pointed to Swarthout’s court leadership which included allowing the team to score two but denying three when you’re up by three points without having to call a time out to do so.
Tingley noted that his team appeared a bit lethargic with its ten point halftime lead. That allowed Family to go ahead 34-33 in the third quarter before the Bears awoke and battled intensely. “It was anybody’s game. We do have big players this year but they’re all young,” he noted. “Alex Brown got a lot of big rebounds. We also have Devin Donnelly and Gavin DuBois. Gavin didn’t get in the game as much as he would have liked but in these nip and tuck games every possession is key,”he observed explaining why he would have to go with his more experienced players in crunch time.
“We lost the rebound wars but won the fast-break point battle. Our most experienced group has only one big man, he said referencing Conor Walsh.
Tri-Valley used a man defense in its win over Deposit but watched Chapel Field beat the Falcons using a zone, so Tingley decided to used a two-three zone this time out. With that season-opening 67-53 win over Deposit, it was the first time the Bears were over .500 in a year. That took some pressure off this game as the team couldn’t fall below .500 with a loss.
Tri-Valley hosts Chester, Chapel Field and Livingston Manor in the coming week. “I think we’re going to be fighting tooth and nail with everyone we play. Swarthout and Pugh are the captains this season.
The game followed a 62-16 win by the T-V girls over Family. It was the Lady Bears’ debut as they begin their quest to defend their Section Nine Class C title. Sabrena Smith led her team with 11. Erin Smith had nine.
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