This past week was a big one for Alex Davis, a Bridgehampton High School sophomore who scored his 1,000th point last Thursday during a 64-52 boys basketball loss to the Ross School in the Killer Bees’ gym.
“I’m glad that’s over,” the Bees’ coach, Carl Johnson, said before another Bees-Ross game was to get underway at the Ross School the next night. Asked to explain the loss to Ross — a rare one, the Ravens being known more for their tennis teams than basketball teams — Johnson said, “We underestimated them. We’d beaten them before, and, because of the 1,000th point thing, Alex was tight.” He scored his 1,000th point in the third quarter.
One should remember, said Johnson, that he had a young team — Mikhail Feaster is the sole senior starter — one that has traded wins thus far with senior-heavy Smithtown Christian, with whom the Bees are expected to vie again for a county Class D championship. The Bees won that game last year, in overtime, and Smith Chris’s seniors haven’t forgotten it.
Smithtown Christian is to play a third league game at Bridgehampton on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The Bees came to play on Friday, winning 68-42 as Jai Feaster, Davis’s fellow sophomore guard, led the way with 30 points. He also drew the Ravens’ 6-foot-8-inch center, Henry Tietz, as his defensive assignment.
Jai’s older brother, Mikhail, provided the spark early on, converting numerous fast-break baskets and finishing with 18 points. Davis wound up with 14. He had scored 32 points on Jan. 17 at Southold, a feat that earned him a “Hardwood Heroes” mention in Newsday, and had 22 in last Thursday’s game.
Bonac Improving
Elsewhere on the South Fork, East Hampton’s team, while it’s been competitive, has largely wound up on the short end of scores.
“We tend to press too much at times and get beat down the floor, but we’re improving, our attitude and effort have been great, and I think we’re capable of beating anyone,” the coach, Bill McKee, said. “We’re getting better in every game — we just have to get over the hump.”
In Friday’s 71-57 loss here to Westhampton Beach, Colin Kelly, a sophomore who began the season on the bench, scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds. Zach Dodge had nine rebounds.
“We were up by 7 at the end of the first quarter, but we fell apart at the end,” McKee said of the Westhampton game. “We’re making too many mistakes at crucial times.”
Amityville defeated the Bonackers 71-59 here on Jan. 17, a game in which the Warriors’ Seville Williams had 27 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, and five steals. That night, it was Toby Foster, another sophomore, who led East Hampton’s scorers, with 17 points.
Whalers Win, Lose
As for Pierson’s team, Dan White, the Whalers’ coach, who, after seven years at East Hampton returned to Sag Harbor when Will Fujita left to coach at Southold, said by phone Sunday that he’s urging his charges to play with the fervor of his former Bonac teams.
The defending county Class C champion, Pierson is likely to make the playoffs again, though without the 6-foot-7 Kyle Seltzer, who is at a preparatory school now, and without Aven Smith, the team’s best 3-point shooter, who is rehabbing an anterior cruciate ligament tear.
The Whalers defeated Babylon, a fellow Class C team, 53-42 on Jan. 17, and lost at Southampton Friday. “It’s not about the winning and losing,” White said. “We beat Babylon by 10 and were terrible — we lost by 25 to Southampton and played spectacular. We didn’t turn the ball over that much, we rebounded well, we fought. . . . I’d rather lose by 25 to a team like Southampton than win by 10 over a team like Babylon, and I told the kids that after the Southampton game. I felt we did a really good job.”