With a front line measuring 6 feet 8 inches (Kyle Seltzer), 6-6 (Charlie McLean), and 6-4 (Luke Seltzer), Pierson High’s boys basketball team had to be the favorite going into Friday’s showdown in the Whalers’ Sag Harbor gym with Bridgehampton’s Killer Bees. But when it comes to the Whalers and the Bees, who rarely field a player over 6 feet, it’s always a barnburner. And it was in this case, too, for three of the four quarters, though the home team was to prevail in the end 54-41.
The teams were so energized by gametime in the packed house that until the Bees’ Alex Davis made the game’s first basket two and a half minutes had come off the clock and seven shots, four by Pierson and three by Bridgehampton, had been put up to no avail.
With the Whalers still scoreless midway through the period, and with the Bees up 7-0, Will Fujita, Pierson’s coach, called a timeout to regroup, which his charges were to do to some extent, though they trailed 13-8 as the first quarter ended.
The second period went better for Pierson, though Bridgehampton continued to play the taller Whalers toe-to-toe, coming up with steals, wrestling for the ball on the floor, which prompted jump-ball calls, and putting up shots from long range with hands in their faces.
The Bees’ lead began to slip away when, in the second half of the second quarter, the Whalers’ decided height advantage began to show. A turnaround layup by McLean brought Pierson to 14-16, and following a traveling call on Bridgehampton’s Dylan Fitzgerald, he made another basket to tie the score. After Savion Ward wrested the lead back for the Bees, McLean again came up big with a putback, tying the count again, at 18-18, and the back-and-forth continued until the halftime buzzer sounded with the teams tied at 22-22.
Luke Seltzer, who was to finish with a game-high 26 points, really began to assert himself down low in the second half, but the Bees fought on. A 3-point play by Kris Vinski, who was fouled while making a fastbreak layup, and a big 3 by Ward moments later kept them close.
The Whalers went into the fourth up 38-35 and extended their lead via a 9-2 run during which Dom Mancino, the point guard, scored on three drives to the hoop. With less than three minutes remaining, Pierson was in control at 49-37, and the Bees had, as their coach, Ron White, was to say later, run out of steam.
McLean and Mancino each finished with 12 points, and Kyle Seltzer, Luke’s younger brother, and Aven Smith, a guard, each had 2. The Seltzers — Luke is a junior, Kyle a freshman — had been in Ireland the past two years, Fujita said.
For Bridgehampton, Davis had 13, Ward 11, Scott Vinski 9, and Jai Feaster and Kris Vinski 4 points each.
“We got to hit our shots,” White said when questioned afterward. Indeed. Had his charges made a few more 3-pointers — they hit on only 4 of 26 attempts from beyond the arc that night — they probably would have been in it until the end.
The Whalers went 1-for-9 from 3-point range, but in the third quarter, when the big men took over, they no longer needed to shoot from the outside.
When he came up from the locker room, Fujita was posed the same questions he had been before the game began: Did the team rebound well? “After the first quarter we did.” Did the team shoot well? “After the first quarter.” Did the team defend well, as you said it does ordinarily? “Yes — we were playing them man-for-man. . . . I thought we did well coming back the way we did, but we have to get better at controlling the game earlier.”
Friday’s was the sole league meeting the Bees and Whalers are scheduled to have, though a month hence they could well face each other again in the county boys basketball tournament’s Class C-D game.