By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
The Pittsford Mendon Vikings hadn’t scored in the second quarter and Robert Nally called timeout with 3:14 remaining until halftime. In a win-or-go-home regional qualifier against East High, Nally did not see enough aggressiveness out of his offensive attack.
“For the first five minutes, we were trying to be too patient and sit with the ball,” Nally explained. “Patience looks different against East High; you have to attack, and then take good shots. If you don’t have it, you’ve gotta kick, and then attack from the other side. And when we get good looks and we attack, and we’re aggressive and get downhill, we tend to finish better.
“My message to them was keeping attacking, but only finish on good looks.”
The Vikings soaked in Nally’s message, scoring on the first play out of the timeout. Kidder Lindley’s basket commenced an 11-5 run before halftime, capped by Lindley’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer to take a 24-23 lead.
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Mendon pulled away in the second half and scored a convincing 51-37 victory at Gates-Chili High School. The Vikings advanced to regional play in Buffalo on Saturday.
Jackson Green led all scorers with 18 points, 12 of which he tallied in the second half. Matt Woods lived up to his No. 3 by contributing four 3-pointers, while Lindley and Caleb Lewis chipped in 11 and 10, respectively.
“We needed to pick up the intensity,” Green remarked. “We knew, coming into the game, that we could get some offensive rebounds. In the third quarter our shots weren’t falling, so we knew we needed to get second chance shots. Shots started falling and we started rebounding.”
East High had not been limited under 50 points all season before Wednesday. The Vikings held the Eagles to just nine points in the third quarter, producing 12 unanswered points. East star Damani Barley ended the quarter on a personal 5-0 run to cut a 14-point lead back to single-digits, but Nally reflected on the 12-0 burst as the winning stretch.
“That was the game right there. We were really dominant on both ends,” Nally acknowledged. “We got a lot of offensive rebounds; we cleaned up our glass really well. We didn’t give up any second chance points. That says a lot, keeping them under 40, a team that’s so explosive and powerful on offense.”
Mendon held Barley, the only Eagle to reach double figures, to 13 points. The Vikings saved their best defense for a defensive fourth quarter, doubling East up as the Eagles scratched across just five points in the final eight minutes.
Kai McCullough and Shamir Caruthers recorded nine and eight points, respectively. Zion Parsons chipped in four points, while Quentin Gordon-Smith scored a point, as well.
The Vikings’ next game will be the Class A regional at Buffalo State on Saturday. Nally’s team strives to represent Section V well against Section VI.
“East is a great team, so of course that win means a lot,” Nally noted. “But we still have a lot of respect for our fellow teams in Section V, so we know it burns for a lot of those guys, it being their last game. We’re hoping to be a proud representative for Class A out of Section V and make teams proud going into states.”
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