Noah trying to control flood of emotions
No one questions the athletic abilities of Blessed Trinity Thunder basketball player Noah Monteforte.
“He is just so physically gifted,” Thunder head coach John Cino said. “He’s big but he can move, shoot the ball and he does so many things well.”
But there is one but when talking about the Grade 12 player.
“The only thing that limits him is himself,” Cino said. “Sometimes he gets down on himself or he gets caught up in the refereeing and he knows that. We have been working on it and working on it and today he did a good job.”
Monteforte scored 17 points Tuesday to help the Thunder record a 63-55 victory over the visiting Notre Dame Fighting Irish in Niagara Catholic Athletic Association league play.
“Sometimes he gets a bit of a bad rap because he is a bit of a hothead but he kept his composure today, he made some big buckets late and he played great defence,” Cino said.
The 6-foot-4 Niagara Tigers travel player laughs when asked about Cino’s description of him.
“I have a little bit of a short temper and I get on myself pretty badly,” he said. “I miss a few shots and I get down but today I just kept my head in it.”
He admits to getting upset with the officiating.
“That’s the temper part of it,” he said, with a smile. “I try to control myself and whenever something bad happens, I try to bite down on my jersey.
“I’ve gotten better through the years.”
As for his jersey, Monteforte’s had a rip on its collar from one too many bites.
“You can ask the coach, but I have already ripped three of them.”
With its win over the Irish, Blessed Trinity improved to 1-1 in league play after opening the season with a 59-54 loss to Saint Paul.
“It has been a long time since we beat them (Notre Dame) and I can’t remember the last time,” Cino said. “Maybe we did it in junior.”
Beating the Irish was also a big deal for Monteforte.
“I’ve grown up playing with and against all those players and I haven’t actually beat them before in school ball,” he said. “It feels pretty good.”
Cino felt it was his team’s composure that helped it defeat the Irish.
“Sometimes we get too caught up in the referees or things we don’t do well or if someone goes wrong for us, then we get down,” he said. “We worked really hard on our composure and I told the guys to just play and don’t let things bother them so much.
“I think we did a good job of that. We made a little run and we kept our composure.”
And when some of the Thunder starters got in foul trouble, players came off the bench and made strong contributions.
“It was a great team win,” Cino said.
Monteforte agreed with that assessment.
“We got contributions from the entire bench and then in the second half our star players picked it up,” he said.
Notre Dame fell to 2-1 in NCAA after opening the season with victories over Saint Michael (66-34) and Lakeshore Catholic (59-34).
“I thought we played hard today and we played well for about 30 minutes,” Notre Dame head coach Mark Gallagher said. “Then we panicked in the last couple of minutes and when they stretched the score out a bit we rushed it a little bit and gave them more opportunities than we wanted to.”
Gallagher describes his team as a work in progress.
“We are coming along,” he said. “We have dealt with some injuries (David Jones and Andrew Zezela) and had some guys sick so we’re trying to find a little bit of flow on offence.”
Unfortunately if they find it, it will be just in time for the Christmas break.
STATS PACK
THUNDER 63 IRISH 55
Johnny Rocco’s/Mick and Angelo’s/Cracker Jacks Player of the Game: Blessed Trinity’s Noah Monteforte with 17 points, including nine in the fourth quarter.
For the Blessed Trinity Thunder: Monteforte 17; Jimmy Hillyard 17; Josh Enns 11; Lucas Cino 10.
For the Notre Dame Fighting Irish: Shamar Campbell 24; David Jones 13; Andrew Zezela 13.
