By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The unmistakable sound of clipboard hitting hardwood is a staple of an elimination game that isn’t going the direction a team had hoped.
It didn’t take long for Aquinas to correct its mistakes.
The Li’l Irish, who trailed 16-15 at the end of the first quarter, outscored Fairport 21-8 in the second. A back-and-forth affair became a dominant 75-52 victory as Jeffrey LaFave’s team advanced to the semifinal round, where it will face Edison Tech.
“It’s sectionals. Everybody gets a little excited in the opening game,” LaFave, whose team earned a bye to the quarterfinal, remarked. “We just had to calm them down, tell them to breathe, relax. And once they did that, they let the game come to them. Things were just fine after that.”
AQ senior Jack Bleier scored 28 points, making five 3-pointers while also dishing three assists, to lead all scorers. Bleier hit his team’s first 3 of the game and, after being held scoreless for the rest of the first quarter, made another basket from long range to extend Aquinas’s lead to 27-19 with 3:31 until halftime. The player LaFave called the “most underrated” in Section V supported his coach’s claim with his play, and when he missed a shot, teammates Mason Blackwood and Jordan Jordan were there for the putback.
Blackwood and Jordan each collected two offensive rebounds. Blackwood recorded 17 points, seven boards and three blocks, while Jordan made six of his eight shots for 12 points and also blocked two shots.
The Li’l Irish opened the second period on a 14-3 run that was bookended by a Mykel White 3-pointer and Will Scanlon basket off a steal. Eight different players scored in their victory.
“What we wanted to do is we wanted to speed them up in the backcourt and we wanted to slow them down in the frontcourt,” LaFave explained of his defensive strategy. “We did that probably better in the third quarter than we did in the second quarter. We were just more disciplined in the second quarter, in our offensive sets. We didn’t run a lot of sets in the first quarter, which was also getting me a little upset. Second quarter we settled down, we started running our sets. Third quarter we did a really good job on the press, slowing them down, and they had to rush getting their shots off.
“And then we did a really good job with our sets. That was the whole gameplan but it didn’t happen ’til the third quarter.”
Wallace Rahmaan and Josh Knapp combined for 24 points for Fairport. Knapp led a 13-6 run to start the fourth quarter, scoring seven of those points as the Red Raiders, who trailed by as many as 25 points in the third, thinned their deficit to 14.
The Li’l Irish responded by scoring seven unanswered points, highlighted by Bleier’s four-point play in the left-side corner, to push their advantage back to 21. The 23-point margin of victory marked AQ’s third win of at least 20 points in its last five games.
“Our team is full of talent. Anyone can score,” Bleier noted. “Anyone can go off for 20 any given night; tonight was just my night. The next night could be anyone else. We have a really good team and I think a lot of kids on our team are underrated. Jordan Jordan’s definitely underrated. But having (coach) say that, it means a lot.”
Aquinas scorers: Bleier 28, Mason Blackwood 17, Jordan 12, Robert McCullough 6, White 3, Scanlon 2, Myles James 2
Fairport scorers: Rahmaan 13, Knapp 11, Alex Hill 9, Ian Kennedy 5, Bill Meagher 2, Bruce Wilder 2
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