By MATT TRABOLD
TRABS KEEPS TABS
Contrasting Styles Clashing in Many Sectional Pairings This Weekend
One of the very best and fun parts of postseason sports matchups is that, much of the time, they can feature opposing teams that did not do battle in regular season play. Taking it one step further, in many cases, these playoff pairings for ballgames bring into play squads from entirely different leagues or conferences, making these couplings rare enough that they would not occur over multiple seasons in a row rather than just the one. These sorts of battles often bring to the table contrasting styles of playing the sport in question, which only adds to the wonderful spectacle.
Even if we just look at the deepest classification in the winter sport this column deals with in this section this season, Class A2, there were so many opportunities coming into the creation of sectional brackets for new-look matchups in terms of at least this campaign. Two-time defending Class A2 sectional champion Wayne Central has only played three Class A2 opponents this season up to this point. Plus, two of those games, against Pittsford Sutherland and Leadership Academy for Young Men, happened in the Eagles’ first two outings of this season. Speaking of Pittsford Sutherland, the Knights only did battle with a foursome of Class A2 opponents this go-around before easily beating Vertus Charter in sectional play last time out on Wednesday.
It seems like just yesterday when Victor almost pulled off a sizable sectional upset of McQuaid Jesuit back in 2017. The Blue Devils were actually the superior seed in that one due to not playing quite as hard a schedule in the regular season that year as its counterpart that afternoon. The battle on the blocks between top five Class of 2019 national recruit Isaiah Stewart and current University at Buffalo football offensive lineman Mike Novitsky was one of the most entertainingly physical ones in this generation of Section V boys basketball.
For the fourth year in a row, Victor and McQuaid will be meeting in the Class AA sectional bracket. This time around, the numbers in front of their team names on said bracket are for the Blue Devils being a No. 11 seed and the Knights being a No. 3 seed. 6-foot-10 Victor sophomore Connor Williams is even significantly bigger than McQuaid Jesuit 6-foot-6 behemoth Connor Zamiara. While Zamiara can show off his versatility for a true frontcourt player many a time with his passing ability, Williams is also able to display some silkiness and versatility for his size. In this matchup down low, Jack Leasure’s club comes to the table with a much more traditional front line behind Zamiara and Harry Bruu.
Just like Victor pulled off a sectional upset against Andrew Mason and Webster Thomas earlier this week, Brighton is also coming off a road victory against a superior postseason seed on Wednesday versus youthful Franklin. These Barons now draw mighty Greece Athena. On one side of this pairing on Saturday afternoon is Brighton many times opting to slow down things in an offensive set with methodical passing around the arc to get as open a shooter as possible. Sometimes, that tactic also frees up a player such as Lukas Stanat on a baseline cut behind the defense. On the other side of this pairing, the Trojans have the weapons to play speedier and hurt an opposition in transition constantly. One of the players at the disposal of Mike Setzer and his staff that is at the forefront of fitting this bill is Melvin Council, Jr. He possesses the physical tool of a strikingly extensive wingspan and the more skillful or fostered skill of being able to athletically contort those limbs of him to execute circus layup after circus layup around defenders. As one of the very fastest players across the section this year, 5-foot-5 junior guard DeAndre Newsome also thoroughly adds to Greece Athena’s transition clout.
SLAP YOUR PEEPERS ON THIS FIVER
Class C1 No. 6 East Rochester at Class C1 No. 3 Charles Finney—Fri., Feb. 22, 7:00 PM
As the adage that applies to many sports states, it is hard to beat a team three times in the same season. That is the situation with this sectional matchup. In a span of a mere five games at the start of this campaign, Charles Finney beat East Rochester by a combined 33 points. The Bombers certainly deserve to be the inferior seed and underdog in this game compared to Charles Finney, but East Rochester fought far enough in postseason play to reach a sectional title game at Blue Cross Arena pretty recently in 2016. Sectional success is ingrained in the program, even with there being a new head coach these days in Patrick Walsh. The main marksman back on that 2016 squad was head coach’s son Casey Michele. Ironically, one of the current senior captains for the Bombers in Austin Mack has the same long hair and much of the perimeter prowess of Casey. Alex Rans and David Warren have also been no stranger to getting offensively hot from downtown over the past couple campaigns. Sophomore center Chuck Domm has the ability to lower his shoulder down low and find success here and there against physically larger competition.
Star eighth-grader Markus Robinson has arguably been talked about more this season in comparison, but we cannot look past how far Keegan Ocorr has come. Ocorr is sixth right now on the Section V career active scoring list. When he first broke into the rotation a few years ago for Joe Marchand and his staff, Keegan’s main role was as a perimeter offense role player. He has since slid over to man many of the main floor general duties, in addition to bettering his repertoire attacking defenses on the drive. He now can be seen regularly sending reverse layups home with ease. Fellow senior captain Xavier Smith, like Robinson, has also been on this varsity club since he was an eighth-grader. He has displayed time and time again over his storied career with the Falcons that he can be a productive fighter against all comers in the paint.
Class AA No. 7 Webster Schroeder at Class AA No. 2 Gates-Chili—Fri., Feb. 22, 6:00 PM
It took a little bit this year for Webster Schroeder to get back on the up and up with a winning streak of three ballgames, but this is the best point in the season for the squad to be riding such a thing. Granted, it was against the gauntlet of a stretch of nights where the opponents were Northeast Douglass, Fairport, Hilton and McQuaid Jesuit, but these Warriors still entered a February 13 affair with Penfield coming off four defeats in a row. A grueling span like that made Matt Spadoni’s crew tried in battle enough to execute three victories in seven days coming into this one. With the quick hands and even quicker feet of Keith Slack and Traylan McCray manning the backcourt for Gates-Chili, it will be important in this matchup for Webster Schroeder starting point guard Colin Merkey to be extra precise with the basketball. The Spartans have a pair of very physically imposing big men in sophomores Adam Williams and Andrew Newcombe, but 6-foot-5 Webster Schroeder senior Collin Donnelly will be the frontcourt player with the most lengthiness this time around.
The ingredients of Gates-Chili coming off nearly getting upset by Webster Thomas last Wednesday and the team having to play a Churchville side that had just upset Irondequoit one night prior were not the recipe for these Spartans ending the regular season this year with a loss. Gates-Chili comes into this sectional battle off a dominant thirteen-point win over that sneaky good crosstown opponent Churchville. If this contest turns into a perimeter shootout against the Webster Schroeder likes of Luke Insley, Josh Hauman and JoJo Plummer, it will be interesting to see who is at the forefront of the Spartans’ side of things alongside Slack. The versatile Williams and junior backcourt player Devin Walton are probably the top candidates.
Class A2 No. 10 Wilson Magnet at Class A2 No. 2 Northstar Christian—Sat., Feb. 23, 6:00 PM
Looking at this Wilson Magnet team on paper, it is a sizable surprise that it has found itself in the doldrums of its classification for much of this season. Going into the Wildcats’ regular season finale against Edison Tech, they had fallen in eight of their last ten ballgames at that point. The roster talent and results by the end of the game synched up on Wednesday for one of the first times this year. Did it ever. Brendan O’Toole’s guys went out and throttled a young but stout School of the Arts side by a gargantuan 38 points in a sectional upset victory on the road. Over the years since he was an underclassman on Wilson Magnet teams with much better records than the present one, Desi Floyd has always seemed to turn it up even more come postseason time. He did against School of the Arts two days ago, and we shall see if he continues that trend in this one versus 19-1 Northstar Christian. 6-foot-5 Brennan Clark, who was sidelined for a block of games towards the middle of the regular season that recently wrapped up, and his penchant for receiving alley-oops off the backboard are taller and bouncier than any of the weapons on the Knights.
#PostSeasonDesi combined with BJ running the floor. https://t.co/5FP37mL5lm
— Paul Gotham (@PickinSplinters) February 21, 2019
This Class A2 postseason bracket would be incredibly interesting even without the involvement of Northstar Christian, but the fact that the mighty nineteen-win Knights are the No. 2 seed in a deeper than usual Class A sectional bracket as a Class D program in terms of school size brings the overall storyline of this particular postseason tournament into the stratosphere. Plus, Northstar Christian is not just a Class D program in terms of school size. The squad would be on the smaller end in terms of school size of whatever Class D classification it played in if it had not been moved up a few classification sizes. Another interesting possible development with this Northstar Christian group in postseason play this year is that a freshman guard named Turner Harris was added to the online roster a week or so ago. If it is the same freshman guard named Turner Harris that was a legitimate freshman star for Gates-Chili down the street for much of the regular season that ended a little over a week ago, that is a massive personnel addition.
Class A2 No. 5 Monroe at Class A2 No. 4 Wayne Central—Sat., Feb. 23, 7:00 PM
This weekly column and a great deal of other people that follow Section V boys basketball have been stating throughout the season that Class A2 in these parts has been operating at a much greater echelon of depth than usual this go-through. In case you did not believe all of those voices, the two-time defending sectional champion of the section in Wayne Central is only the No. 4 seed in the current sectional bracket for the classification despite returning essentially the exact same rotation from those last two very successful iterations of the squad. The one main exception being Braeden Zenelovic. These Eagles do not come into this one off the most promising trio of performances. Two outings after getting upset on the road at below .500 at the time Honeoye Falls-Lima, Wayne Central dropped its regular season finale last Thursday against a Class B foe, albeit a successful one this go-around, in Newark by six points. This will be an important contest for head coach’s son and starting point guard Billy Thomson with Monroe boasting the locally elite two-headed point guard monster of De’vante Mateo and Fidel Brock.
This meeting of Eagles and Red Jackets will feature a substantially interesting frontcourt battle of contrasting styles. On the one hand, Nick Carmichael of Wayne Central has been more than successful over the past few years at playing under the rim and in harmony with the backboard square through a bevy of cunning low post moves. On the other hand, the main front line duo for Monroe these days operates frequently above the rim, with junior Jamar Williams being known to throw through a mean dunk from time to time and 6-foot-3 senior Tyquil Glasgow rising to record mounds of blocked shots. Jaiden Burlee is who Bill Thomson and his staff start up front alongside Carmichael, but Max LaRocco is a capable bench spark through bumping and pinballing around the paint in the best way possible on both ends.
Class A2 No. 8 Leadership Academy for Young Men at Class A2 No. 1 East High—Sat., Feb. 23, 7:00 PM
We shall see if there is any difference eleven days makes. It was that many days ago East High came back in a beefy way to beat Leadership Academy for Young Men in a home game. The Lions had a lead in the third quarter of that one a week and a half ago that reached twelve points at one point, but Chaz Washington and company put into motion from there one of their patented second half comebacks this season for an eight-point victory. This will actually be the third meeting this campaign between the two notable programs, with East High also taking the first get-together back on December 20, 80-78. With East High having more depth than usual this year, now healthy starting point guard Maurice Coney is learning more and more since returning from a lengthy injury stint that he does not have to play the main distributor quite as much. Maurice has taken advantage of that wrinkle of this squad to the tune of becoming much more aggressive on the offensive end trying to score himself, including mixing it up inside against the front line of the opposition.
Leadership Academy for Young Men got its 2018-2019 East High on to a certain degree in its sectional opener this season on Wednesday as it held off a strong third quarter comeback attempt by Honeoye Falls-Lima. These Lions did not have to coordinate a full second half comeback wave on its home floor there against the Cougars, but they did have to regain the momentum reins after the away side quickly got within a little over one bucket on the scoreboard after the halftime break. Reggie Simmons’s men are doing a great job of late at incorporating one more pass before putting up a shot attempt in an offensive possession for a clearer look. As part of that, Onajae Anderson and Shamir McCullough have shown a lot of commitment and effort navigating back and forth on the baseline, including with head fakes.
SECTION V IN DIVISION I UPDATE
Brian Fobbs—Jr., Towson (Bishop Kearney)
Those that follow Towson men’s basketball closely have been witnessing something truly special out of Fobbs over the last seven ballgames. After igniting for 29 points and six rebounds against a very stout Hofstra side on Thursday, Fobbs has now recorded 29 points in three of his last four outings. That also features him going for at least 25 points in the scorebook for a consecutive stretch of four games. This explosive run for Brian has resulted in him tallying at least 22 points in six of his last seven performances. Over his last two nights starting for the Tigers, the former King in Section V competition hit a whopping eight of his twelve cumulative shot attempts from downtown against that Pride and Drexel in a fifteen-point victory.
Brian Fobbs throws down a dunk. He’s feeling it early. Fobbs has 15 points in the 1H. Tigers lead 33-31 with 4:26 remaining. pic.twitter.com/ZN7GpzBBoK
— Towson Men’s Hoops (@Towson_MBB) February 22, 2019
Jeenathan Williams—Fr., Buffalo (University Preparatory Charter School for Young Men)
When you achieve your career-high in both scoring and rebounding in a ballgame, the circumstances do not really matter. Accomplishing that is always a nice feat. On Tuesday night against Ohio, Jeenathan went for thirteen points on 60.0 percent shooting, eight rebounds, a blocked shot and a steal. That contest also was the second-most amount of minutes of playing time Williams has received in his collegiate career as his Bulls were rolling in a game they ultimately reigned supreme in by 47 points. That by no means puts an asterisk on Jeenathan’s stellar showing because Ohio took down Radford and Marshall earlier this season. Those are a couple of nationally relevant non-conference wins this year even if those Bobcats have struggled a little bit in MAC competition since.
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