“We’ll get ’em next year,” a Killer Bee fan said to a former Killer Bee, Andre Johnson, as they left Southampton High School’s gym last Thursday afternoon following Bridgehampton’s 60-45 loss to Smithtown Christian in the county Class D boys basketball championship game.
“And the year after that,” said Johnson, pointing out that four Bridgehampton starters that day — namely Alex Davis, Jai Feaster, Tyler Fitzgerald, and Adrian Molina — had two more years left.
The outcome of the Class D game was expected — Smithtown Christian’s senior-heavy lineup is strong, inside and out — as was Pierson High School’s 53-39 win later over Babylon in the Class B tilt.
It was the third straight county championship for the Whalers, though Dan White, the team’s coach, said it did not come easy, owing in large part to a two-and-a-half-week layoff. “We haven’t played that bad in two months,” the coach said afterward, “but we still won.”
Three of his starters, Luke Seltzer, Charlie McLean, and Dom Mancino, were tagged with two fouls each in the first quarter, giving White considerable cause for concern. But Aidan Schmitz’s half-court 3-pointer just before the halftime break provided a boost, sending the Whalers into the locker room with a 25-20 halftime lead, and when the third began they were fired up, playing well, White said, on defense and in transition.
“We were up by 10 at the end of the third quarter and maintained that lead throughout the fourth,” he said. McLean’s slam dunk with Pierson up by 16 was as if to say, “It’s over.”
Seltzer, the Pierson senior who recently scored his 1,000th career point, finished with a game-high 23 points, followed by McLean with 16, Mancino with 9, and Schmitz with 5. Sincere McDougal led the Panthers with 22 points, a total that included four 3-pointers.
The Whalers were to have played West Hempstead in a state Class B regional semifinal at Center Moriches High School Monday. The Whalers went in as decided underdogs. The 18-4 Rams as of Monday had lost only one of the 12 games they’d played since Jan. 6. “They’re nine deep,” White said of West Hempstead. “They’re athletic and well coached. We’ll have to play our best game if we’re to have a chance.”
Bridgehampton’s young players fought hard in their loss to Smithtown Christian, wrestling with the Knights’ big man, Isaiah McCarter, under the boards, coming up with steals and driving to the hoop, but Smithtown Christian, which had bested the Bees in three of four meetings during the regular season, was never to trail in Thursday’s clash. It was 14-9 after the first quarter, and 23-15 at the half.
With a minute to play in the second quarter, and with the Bees trailing 21-12, Lorenzo Crilly, who runs the Knights’ offense, crashed to the floor as Jai Feaster whirled by him, and had to go to the bench. In the moments leading up to the halftime break, Feaster made good on one of two free throws and, after outwrestling McCarter for the ball, muscled in a layup that kept the Bees’ and their fans’ hopes alive. (The 8-point gap would have been narrower had not Davis been utterly hexed in that period, going 0-for-8 from the field and 0-for-4 from the foul line.)
More or less a nonfactor in the first half, Crilly, who returned to the fray when the third quarter began, quickly served notice, answering a drought-ending 3-pointer by Davis with one of his own, and, after another Davis 3 that pared Smith Chris’s margin to 7, feeding Nehemiah Yuen for a 3-point reply that upped the Knights’ lead to 31-21.
A steal by Feaster and his feed to Davis for a fast-break layup pulled the Bees to within 7 points again with about two minutes left in the third, but again the Knights refused to yield, closing out the period with an 8-2 spurt.
The Bees, as the result of a Davis putback, pulled to within 8 points, at 51-43, with about three minutes remaining, but could come no closer.
Davis finished with a game-high 27 points, Jai Feaster had 14, and Mikhail Feaster, Jai’s brother and the sole senior on the team, and Molina each had 2.
The winners had three players finish in double figures — Nehemiah Yuen with 19 points, McCarter with 18, and Crilly with 14.