St. Mary’s Wins Nail-biter Against Nichols

An encounter between Monsignor Martin rivals Nichols and St. Mary’s ended in thrilling fashion as the Lancers downed the Vikings by a final score of 50-43.

The seven-point victory by St. Mary’s (7-3, 2-2 MMAA) was a close one, and it was one that was going to be very difficult to get, according to Lancers coach Paul Rath.

“We knew it was going to be a tough outing tonight,” Rath said. “Will Johnson’s one of the best shooters in Western New York. TJ Banaszak went six-for-six from the three-point line so we knew we had to protect the perimeter, and Myles Hervey played extremely hard underneath.

“I didn’t know he was as big as he was until we shook hands after the game, but he’s a big, strong guy. He caused a lot of problems for us tonight by setting up some nice screens.”

After a first half in which the Lancers led by just one point (20-19), each team went nose-to-nose with one another and didn’t give the opposition any opportunities to pull away. In the fourth quarter, however, that changed, as Christian Schablewski scored on a timely layup that helped the Lancers pull ahead by four with a little more than a minute to spare.

“In the fourth quarter, we finally hit a couple of shots to open them up, but we needed to get a few more baskets down low that we hadn’t gotten all game,” Rath said. “The one from Schablewski at the end of the game kind of broke their spine a little bit. That was a big bucket, I was begging for an inside basket all game long.”

A short while later, Rath called a timeout in order to discuss with his team how to defend the Vikings. Eventually, he decided on utilizing a tactic that hadn’t been applied all season – and it worked like a charm.

“We knew that Nichols was going to try and get some quick baskets, so we threw out a little 2-2-1 set – the first time we had used it all year – just to try to slow them down, and I think it confused them a bit,” Rath said. “We were very active on the perimeter on that last minute, and I think it forced them into attempting some passes that they wouldn’t have normally thrown. We were able to close out on them and made them take some tough shots at the end.”

Eric Brown led the Lancers in scoring with 16 points, and Banaszak paced the Vikings with 12 of his own.

“That was a great game, but we just couldn’t execute near the end,” Vikings coach Darren Finn said. “We also didn’t have some calls go our way, but we just need to put this one behind us and move on.”

With the season into mid-January, the standings in the Monsignor Martin Association are starting to get a bit jammed, but whoever comes out on top in the end will be because of hard work and self-improvement, according to Rath.

“There’s a lot of parity in our league,” Rath said. “We got pretty banged up against O’Hara, and they seem to be the front-runner at this point. It’s so even across the board in our division that whoever has a good game on a certain day could very well win the whole thing. I think whoever improves the most from now through the next month will probably end up winning our championship.

“We’re kind of in the middle of the pack with a 2-2 league record, so there’s room for improvement. One thing we do need to get better at is offensive zone work, so we’re going to try to get that right as soon as possible.”