Irish shoots lights out versus Mustangs
They say that nobody is perfect, which very well may be true.
In the first half of the Niagara Catholic Athletic Association AAA basketball final, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish came pretty close. The Irish lit up the scoreboard en route to a 51-35 halftime lead over the visiting St. Michael Mustangs, including 27 points from beyond the three-point arc on more than 80 per cent shooting – which is pretty much unheard of in high school basketball. The lead was too much for the Mustangs to overcome as Notre Dame came away with a 90-73 victory.
“We were hyper-focused to start the game and we knew we couldn’t take these guys lightly,” said Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game Will Benko. “We have come out strong in other games this year, but we’ve never scored 51 in one half.”
Notre Dame’s highly efficient first half was not lost on Mustang coach Keith Bomberry.
“We had hands in their face, we had good rotations and I think they missed three shots in the entire first half. That’s what we counted,” he said. “For us to score 35 in a half is really good, actually.”
Although Notre Dame held a seemingly comfortable 16-point half-time lead, the Mustangs opened the second half on an 11-0 run to cut the lead to five, sending a clear message that they were not going back to Niagara Falls quietly.
“At half-time, we said that maybe they’d slow down a bit and we could chip away, which we did,” Bomberry said. “But we just couldn’t match their buckets. And Benko had a phenomenal game. We kept telling our guys not to go under (the screens), and when they did, he and Aidan (Luchetta) killed us.”
Following the Mustangs’ 11-0 run, Notre Dame coach Matt Helmkay called a time out and readjusted his team’s defense.
“We switched from a 1-2-2 zone to a 2-3 zone because they were getting boards and looks on the inside from Arwin,” he said.
Helmkay was referring to Saint Michael player of the game, Arwin Chima, who led all scorers with 26 points.
“That was the game we had been waiting for from him,” Bomberry said. “We needed the 12Bs to rise, and for the most part they did, especially Arwin. But they (Notre Dame) had an excellent game plan going in and you have to give it to their coaches, they did a great job.”
“Switching to the 2-3 zone allowed us to get a little more help in the lane, get a few more rebounds and focus a little more on Arwin,” added co-coach Roe Roman, who coaches the team along with Helmkay and Andy Luchetta. “We know basketball is a game of runs and we adapted to their run and we were able to put our foot back on the metal.”
Not only did the Irish top the run, they were able to go on a run of their own led by Benko.
“Will is the only player on our team who has a total green light,” Rowan said. “If he has an opening, no matter what, we want him to shoot.”
The Irish run allowed them to extend their lead back up to 14 entering the fourth quarter, which was too much to ask the Mustangs to come back from.
With the Zone 2 title under their belt, the Irish will head to Eden High along with West Niagara Secondary School, A.N. Myer and Saltfleet to battle for the Southern Ontario Secondary School Association (SOSSA) title.
“We need to continue to play team basketball,” Roman said. “We can’t have lapses moving forward like we had at the beginning of the second half. We will talk about that at practice tomorrow and hopefully it won’t happen again.”
STATS PACK
Irish 90 Mustangs 73
Cat’s Caboose Player of the Game: Will Benko with 17 points.
For the Notre Dame Fighting Irish: Benko 17; Trent Groulx 20; Luchetta 17; Kurt Agustin 14; David Babilola 9; Anthony Ventresca 4; Eric Hills, Umar Rawther 2; Ashen Dunnville 1.
For the Saint Michael Mustangs: Chima 26; Nick Karagiannis 20; Hogen Genero 9; Matt Lim 8; Andrew Karagiannis, Jessiah Bowyer, Murtada Mamoud, 4.
Up next: Notre Dame advances to the SOSSA playdowns Thursday at Eden.
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