GLENS FALLS, N.Y. – Brandon Triche is by all accounts headed for a great college career at Syracuse University next fall. The 6-foot-4 Jamesville-DeWitt senior has a feathery shooting touch, a good eye for distributing the ball and fluid moves for slashing through the paint.
He is most definitely a money player.
But take a look at actual money. Pull a nickel out of your pocket or a dollar bill out of your wallet and take note of the Latin words on The Great Seal : E pluribus unum – roughly, “One composed of many.”
Grasp that and you will come to understand the Jamesville-DeWitt boys basketball team. The Red Rams relied on all their starters to earn the NYSPHSAA Class A championship at the Glens Falls Civic Center with a 77-75 victory against Peekskill in overtime on Sunday. Triche finished with 12 points on 4-for-15 shooting and eight rebounds, four assists and four steals.
If the scoring and shooting lines for him were sub-par on a day when Peekskill got a combined 43 points from stars Daquan Brickhouse and Ralph Watts, the work of his mates was not, and J-D lives to see another day because of it.
Junior Lamar Kearse scored 16 points on 7-for-10 shooting and Alshawn Hymes hit for 21 points.
Alshawn Hymes, Jamesville-DeWitt
File Photo By Kevin Yen
Steve Thompson hit two back-breaking buckets in overtime, the latter a 12-footer from the right baseline that made it 77-73 with 51.1 seconds to go.
And 6-8 freshman Dajuan Coleman had the first of what will surely be many great days – posting 18 points and 18 rebounds.
Each took over the game at times to improve J-D’s record to 26-1 and set up a much-anticipated Federation semifinal against Iona Prep on Friday in Glens Falls.
“That’s what the game is about, it’s about stretches,” Triche said after accepting the tournament MVP award. “There’s always one guy stepping up. I was the guy everyone was expecting to step up and I didn’t tonight. But when one person isn’t doing it someone will pick them up. There was Lamar, and Steve played great defense and stepped up and made the jump shot in the corner.”
Said Red Rams coach Bob McKenney: “He’s had a great supporting cast. And he’s just a dominant player, so sometimes the guys get lost. Everyone knows Alshawn -- he’s put up numbers the last two years. I’m really happy for Lamar Kearse. You can argue he might have been the MVP. He’s been kind of overshadowed by Alshawn and Brandon. People don’t realize he’s actually a really, really good basketball player.
“Next year when we turn the reins over him to run the team everybody will be worried – ‘What are you going to do?’ We’re going to be different. Brandon may be one of the best ever to play in New York State, but we’re going to be in good hands.”
Kearse was the man behind the pivotal stretch of the game. Peekskill had led for most of the game and snapped a 48-48 tie as Ralph Watts drilled a 3-pointer to conclude the third quarter. But Kearse took over the next two minutes with a driving layup, a jumper from the free-throw line and the scoop of a loose ball at midcourt for another layup. He capped the 9-2 run with a steal and outlet to Triche, who was fouled and turned the drive into a three-point play.
“I knew he had it in him,” Coleman said. “He works hard every day in practice.”
Though Peekskill would come back to take a 66-65 lead late in regulation, the Devils played much of the final 17 minutes back on their heels, no longer able to control the flow of the game as they had in the first half.
“We couldn’t get our offense going,” Kearse said. “We had a tough time shooting, so we had to get to the basket. Mid-range (jumpers) and 3-pointers weren’t there. We had to get to the basket for easy finishes.”
Hymes’ first starring role of the day came in the second quarter when he started sniping from progressively longer distances. First there was pretty drive to slice into Peekekill’s 27-21 lead (its biggest of the day) and then a jumper and a follow of Triche’s miss. His 3-pointer from the left wing 2:28 before the half gave J-D its first lead.
“I wanted to take Hymes out of the game and let other guys make shots,” Peekskill coach Lou Panzanaro said. “But Hymes went off in the second quarter. Daquan said, ‘Coach, he just keeps stepping back further and further.’ And that’s what he does. It’s not that we weren’t aware of it. We contested it and he made plays.”
Hymes made a pullup jumper with 44 seconds left to give J-D, the defending Federation Class A champion, a 67-66 lead. Brickhouse tied it with a free throw with :20.2 to play, and Thompson couldn’t knock down the winner from the right baseline near the end of regulation.
Overtime began with Kearse driving and dishing to Triche for a bucket, then cashing in a rebound for a 71-67 lead. Peekskill would pull to within a basket four times, the last on two Watts free throws.
There would be one more chance for the Devils after Watts stole an inbounds pass in the offensive end with :09.8 remaining. He dished off to Brickhouse on the perimeter, and the 5-7 junior drove hard down the right side of the lane. He lofted the ball toward the rim in heavy traffic but the shot didn’t make it to the twine.
”Ten seconds to go and the ball in my point guard’s hands,” Panzanaro said. “”Some coaches would say call a timeout. But if I drew a play up it would have been to put it in my point guard’s hands and go to the basket. Him driving to the basket is as good as I could have drawn up. It doesn’t happen very often that Daquan doesn’t finish a layup.”
And so the day ended with J-D defending its title and winning its third New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship in six years. The other three trophies from that span reside at Peekskill.
“You got a chance to see two marvelous teams, No. 1 and 2 all year,” McKenney said. “You don’t often get that final matchup of the top two teams. It felt like a heavyweight fight. One team would make a play and then the other team made a play.
“At one point I knew in the fourth quarter it was going to come down to a play at the end of the game. They had a couple of good looks and fortunately they didn’t go or else we’d still be out there doing this.”
Class AA: Newburgh Free dominates against Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls had its season end with a championship-game power failure for the second consecutive season. After dropping the NYSPHSAA Class AA final to Albany’s Bishop Maginn a year ago, the Wolverines dropped a 62-42 decision to Newburgh Free Academy in the finale to the three-day, 15-game tournament.
Junior Damon Cousar shot 10-for-15 from the field for 20 points and also ripped down 20 rebounds for the Goldbacks (21-4), who got 56 points from underclassmen. Tournament MVP Marcus Henderson scored 11 points (making all three of his 3-pointers) and handed out four assists.
Marcus Henderson, Newburgh Free Academy
File Photo By Lonnie Webb
Henderson opened the scoring with a 3-pointer, Patrick Johnson put back a miss and William Bouton made a three-point play for an 8-3 lead. Niagara Falls would get it back to 10-6 but the quarter ended with Newburgh up by 16-6.
It was 33-21 at the half thanks to Cousar’s double-double (12 points, 11 boards) and then the Goldbacks stretched it out to 49-32 after three
Kelvin Agee led Niagara Falls (24-1) with 17 points but shot just 7-for-26 for the field as the Wolverines went 13-for-62 as a team.
Newburgh Free Academy advances to the Federation Class AA tournament next weekend, taking on the winner of the game between Rice and Abraham Lincoln for overall bragging rights in New York.
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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