GLENS FALLS, N.Y. – Bob VanValkenburgh’s kids went from breakthrough to heartbreak in a matter of minutes a year ago, seeing a sectional championship game against Roxbury slip away.
“We sort of let it get away,” he recalled. “We had about a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter. It happened, but we knew we had a lot of guys returning.”
The same core of kids competes together throughout the year. They followed last winter’s disappointment with a three-loss baseball season and then took success to a new level by winning a Section IV soccer championship and a berth in the NYSPHSAA tournament.
And then there was this magical winter at South Kortright. The Rams ran the table everywhere and against everyone, pocketing league and sectional basketball championships and finishing the mission Saturday night with a 47-43 victory against Greenport (22-4) for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class D championship.
Rashawn Herrington scored 15 points on 6-for-10 shooting, Tanner Metzko made five of six attempts for 11 points and tournament MVP Eric Burns scored 10 as South Kortright completed a 26-0 season.
In the night’s other finals, Avon held off Maple Hill in Class C, 61-55, and Bishop Kearney outmuscled Binghamton Seton Catholic in Class B, 65-48.
The finals conclude Sunday with the large-school doubleheader: Jamesville-DeWitt vs. Peekskill in Class A and Niagara Falls vs. Newburgh Free Academy in Class AA. Jamesville-DeWitt downed Batavia, 40-32, and Peekskill eliminated East Hampton, 55-48. Niagara Falls advanced with a 59-49 triumph against Syracuse CBA, and NFA ended Uniondale’s season, 58-51.
Niagara Falls, too, is striving for an undefeated season, but the Wolverines would have to return to Glens Falls next weekend for the Federation tournament. The next time anyone in South Kortright (26-0) picks up a basketball, though, will be about mid-June. And it will be without this season’s four senior starters, for whom it will soon be time to move on.
“We’ve almost all been playing together since youth leagues,” Burns said. “Rashawn came here his ninth-grade year, left a year to go down to North Carolina and came back, and we were all together again.”
Herrington put the team over the top. Burns points to the 6-foot junior’s explosiveness and his ability to create momentum with dunks, but in the coach’s mind his big contribution is on defense.
“He has such great athletic ability out on top of the zone, creating pressure and forcing mistakes,” said VanValkenburgh, who is in his 26th season. “There weren’t that many opportunities for steals today, but he still played so well.”
Herrington finished with one steal but also added four rebounds and two assists. He played big down the stretch, first scoring a field goal to cap an 8-2 stretch for a 42-34 lead and following up with a bucket from the right wing. His only two free throws of the night, with 50.3 seconds to play, got it to 46-38 – finally out of even Ryan Creighton’s distance.
Creighton ended his schoolboy career with 31 points on 12-for-26 shooting. Coupled with 27 points in the 73-68 win over top-ranked Maple Grove in Friday’s double-overtime semifinal, the 6-foot-3 senior ended up as the No. 2 scorer in state history with 2,799 points.
“He’s a handful,” VanValkenburgh said. “I thought we did as good a job as possible on him and he still had 31. He’s so talented. We couldn’t have done any better. He uses his body and slashes. He’s so big for Class D.”
Said Burns: “He’s amazing.”
Class C: No letting down for Avon
Study the final numbers all you want, but there was no Avon statistic in the boxscore that jumped out as a key to game. The Braves shot the ball a little better and rebounded it a little more often than Maple Hill, but they also gave it away or had it stolen more.
When push came to shove, they played steady ball to pull away from a 12-12 tie early in the second quarter to a 47-37 lead with eight minutes to play.
And then the team that rode its beefy senior frontcourt to wins all year capped a 27-1 season by riding the free-throw shooting of its little guys. Tournament MVP Dan Banach and Charlie Passarell each went 3-for-4 in the final minute to complete the 61-55 victory
“I told myself, ‘This is what you always dream of,’” Banach said, “If you’re going to be a good player you’ve got to make those shots.”
Maple Hill twice cut the lead to three down the stretch, but never got off a high percentage shot for a tie.
John Housel, a 6-5 senior, led Avon with 13 points and 15 rebounds, also blocking two shots. Banach (who had five assists and two steals) and Garrett Kesel scored 12 apiece, with the later doing all his damage in the first half as Avon took a 31-22 lead.
Maple Hill, making its first appearance in the tournament after winning a Section II crown for the first time in 51 years, was led by 16 points from Trent Tibbitts, who also pulled down six rebounds.
Class B: Kearney repels third-quarter threat
It’s not like he did it all by himself, but Kearney junior Robert Gray made an indelible impression in the fourth quarter to put away a game whose outcome had been put briefly in doubt.
With Seton Catholic having clawed back to within 49-42 at the end of a rough-and-tumble third quarter, Kearney suddenly ripped away every rebound on the defensive end of the floor and pushed the ball up the court.
In short order, Gray strung together a baseline jumper, a 10-footer from right of the key, a beautiful finger-roll layup, another transition bucket and then a slice down the lane for another transition bucket. It was all part of a 12-0 run – punctuated by sophomore Chuwaka Ikpeze’s rim-rattling dunk-- that stretched the lead to 63-44 with just over 3:00 to play.
“We started playing basketball,” Gray said.
It came on the heels of something that more closely resembled football to close out the third quarter. On consecutive Seton Catholic possessions, Kearney’s James Taylor was called for a personal and a technical while trying to break up a layup and Jerome Lewis was whistled for a hard foul on Chris Furner, who was chasing down an offensive rebound.
Tom Toro made three of four free throws in between, and Kearney’s lead had suddenly dropped from 10 points to seven.
“It was two physical teams on the court,” Lewis said. “We both play in-your-face defense. We both take pride in playing hard defense.”
The break between quarters gave the teams a chance to settle down, but the Kings knew at that point they had lost some of their momentum.
“Coach (Jon) Boon beats it into us: Discipline, discipline, discipline,” Lewis said. “We went to the bench and he said, ‘It’s time. If we’re not ready now, then when would we ever be ready?’”
The answer turned out to be: quarters one, two and four.
Kearney, the only team to beat Class C state champion Avon, built leads of 25-17 and 35-26 in the first half by getting into the paint repeatedly on the rare possessions where they weren’t running fast breaks. The Kings registered five layups and five other buckets in the paint, which explained their 58.3 percent (14-for-24) shooting.
Having brought home its first NYSPHSAA championship, Kearney will return to Glens Falls next weekend for the Federation Class B tournament. Lancaster St. Mary’s and Collegiate from New York City have already qualified, with the PSAL set to crown its champion Sunday.
John Schiano, who has written about high school sports in western and central New York for more than 25 years, covers New York for MaxPreps. He may be reached at
johnschianosports@gmail.com
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