By BILLY HEYEN
PENFIELD, N.Y. — At halftime Friday, Penfield head coach Jason Ellis asked his team to look in the mirror.
“Who are we, and who have we tried to be all year?” Ellis said postgame he had proceeded to ask his players at the half.
The Patriots remembered after the break, embracing their defensive identity to hold Canandaigua to six third-quarter points. That was enough to pull away Friday and win, 62-48. Penfield was led by 32 points and 14 rebounds from Dyllon Scott, but he too acknowledged that it was defensive intensity out of the half that made all the difference.
“Well you know everybody says, ‘Defense makes easy offense,’” Scott said. “Once we focused on defense, we already knew that the offense, we were gonna pass, cut, play with each other. And as long as we play together, we already knew that our offense was gonna be fine.”
Ellis wasn’t too upset with the first half, despite the lead bouncing back and forth between a Penfield team that entered the night at 4-1 against a Canandaigua team that entered 1-4. The Patriots’ goal is to hold opponents below 52 points. So even though the Braves slowed the game down in the first half and kept it close, 26 visitor points had them right on pace for the number Penfield wanted to hold them to.
The Patriots didn’t mind the slow pace, either. They try to “make games as ugly as possible,” Ellis said.
“We joke around and say we’re Clydesdales — we like to trot in the mud,” Ellis added.
Penfield scored the final two baskets of the first half to go to the break up a point. Then came the halftime self-evaluation, and out of the locker room came a Patriots defense ready to shut down Canandaigua.
They cut off driving lanes. They closed out on shooters, especially Canandaigua’s Derek Andrews after his 11 first-half points, which included three 3s. And just as Scott said afterward, defensive stop after defensive stop created offense.
It was Scott himself creating much of that scoring, including back-to-back 3-pointers late in the third quarter to take the Penfield lead to 40-30, its largest of the evening.
“He’s tough,” Ellis said of Scott. “We were on a little run, they called a timeout, and first thing I went out there and said, ‘I don’t know how you did that.’ It’s nice to have that in your toolbox.”
Dyllon Scott hits back-to-back 3s for @PenfieldBball to expand to the largest lead of the night. Scott has 24 and Penfield leads 40-30 with 2:22 to play in the third against Canandaigua. @PickinSplinters pic.twitter.com/vRfDAefSph
— Billy Heyen (@BillyHeyen) December 28, 2019
Penfield benefited from friendly home rims on two bounces that got 3-pointers to fall late in the third quarter, first for Ryan Wensley and then for Brady Flanagan. It concluded a quarter that Ellis pointed to as the “game-changer.”
The Patriots started the second half up a point. They went to the fourth quarter up 16 after a 21-6 third quarter.
“Once the kids started having fun being who they were, the game just kind of rolled out like we were hoping it would,” Ellis said.
Scott went back to the block in the fourth quarter to preserve the Penfield lead, scoring off a lefty hook, a lefty runner and an offensive rebound before polishing his night off with two foul shots.
But even without those buckets, Penfield’s defense had come out of halftime, shown its mettle and muddied the game up in the third quarter. As Ellis expected, it led to offense, fired up the home crowd and ended with another opponent held below the 52-point goal. The Patriots were asked to step up by their head coach at halftime, and they did.
“It shows our fight,” Scott said. “It shows that we’re willing to fight and we’re never gonna give up. No matter if it’s a close game or not, we know that if we keep fighting and we play defense and play together, we’ll be fine.”
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