POLAND – The high school basketball season is only in its infancy, so not many teams are going to be playing in mid-season form.
That means the difference in winning and losing before the Christmas break usually comes down to doing the little things, like crashing the offensive glass and forcing turnovers, which is what York did in a 65-56 win over Poland Tuesday night.
Phil Alibrandi scored a game-high 31 points and led the Wildcats’ aggressive attack of the offensive boards, with seven of his 10 rebounds coming at his own end. Sam Mason added 16 points, six rebounds and four steals for York.
Keegan Fennessy led Poland with 22 points, including four 3-pointers, but couldn’t stretch York’s stubborn defense enough to create more room for 6-foot-7 center Jon Lecznar (12 points, eight rebounds, three blocks) to operate inside.
Simply put, the Wildcats pulled themselves out of a first half mired by sloppy play before the Knights could. The two teams turned the ball over on their first seven possessions combined before Alibrandi began to lead the charge on the offensive glass as the Wildcats closed the first quarter with a 12-10 lead. York had eight second chances in the first quarter and, at one point in the second quarter, had 12 offensive rebounds compared to six total rebounds by the Knights.
“The first half, they outworked us. They wanted the ball more,” said Poland first-year coach Chris Willer.
The extra effort and 15 Poland turnovers helped York extend to a 13-point lead at the half.
“I thought we were pretty active early in the game and we performed some run-and-jumps (defensively) and some double-teams that kind of kept them on edge and their guards didn’t handle it all that well,” said York coach Rick Brault.
The Knights (0-2) are trying to learn Willer’s new system with little varsity experience in the backcourt.
“Right now, we’re just really struggling on composing ourselves and realizing that we don’t have to go 100 mph all the time,” said Willer, whose team had 31 turnovers. “We’re turning the ball over way too much, and we’ve got to work on doing the little things and not trying to do too much.”
The Knights (0-2) did a better job defensively and protecting the boards in the second half, but they still had trouble protecting the ball and never could get into enough of an offensive flow to get the deficit lower than nine points in the third quarter.
“We went out and really got after it, played hard team defense and took it personal,” Willer said. “Heart was a big thing. It just wasn’t there the first half. Second half it was, and we outplayed them in the second half.”
They were able to slowly chip away at the deficit in the fourth quarter because they held the Wildcats to 29 percent shooting from the floor, but by that point the game had turned into a free throw shooting contest. The Knights shot 64 percent (16-of-25) from the line, while the Wildcats (16-of-26) were able to keep pace enough to hold off a late Poland charge.
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