EAST SYRACUSE – Two games, less than 24 hours apart, may have turned the Bishop Grimes boys basketball season from one full of disappointment to one teeming with probabilities.
Going into its own Martin Luther King Jr. Tournament, the Cobras were 4-5, having lost five in a row, all by double-digit margins, following an 0-4 start, but it turned things around with a pair of victories over high-quality opponents.
It started Sunday in the opening round when Grimes rose up and, against the state’s top-ranked Class B team, Binghamaton Seton Catholic, pulled out a 66-65 victory over the Saints.
Weeks of struggles faded as Grimes, with hot shooting at the outset, roared to a 24-15 lead by the end of the first quarter and kept it up the rest of the half.
Down 43-26 at the break, Seton Catholic erased most of that deficit in the third quarter and then, as time wound down, did all it could to snatch the victory from Grimes.
But the hosts held on with a superb team effort as Eric Wall, with 16 points, led a well-balanced attack. Sylvester Seton gained 14 points, with Jon Corl gaining 13 points and Deng Garang 12 points as Jon Farstler gained seven points.
This big win was followed by another one in Monday’s championship game against Buffalo’s St. Francis, a game that spilled into overtime before the Cobras fought past the Raiders 80-74.
St. Francis had knocked off Corcoran 57-50 in the other opening-round game and, more importantly, had shown its quality a week earlier on that same Grimes court when it ended Christian Brothers Academy’s 34-game win streak.
Again the Cobras shot well at the outset, and of greater importance was the way it kept its composure when the Raiders appeared to take charge right before halftime, seizing a 37-29 lead.
Instead, led by Garang, Grimes slowly made its way back, and by the middle of the fourth quarter had caught St. Francis, leading to a back-and-forth exchange for the rest of regulation.
Unable to settle it, the two sides went to OT 67-67, and remained even until Garang’s basket with just over a minute to play broke a 74-74 tie. The Cobras held the Raiders without a point the rest of the way.
Finishing with a career-best 34 points, Garang garnered tournament MVP honors. Corl hit several key baskets on his way to 18 points as Wall had 13 points and Seton added 10 points. Seton Catholic edged Corcoran 57-55 in the consolation game.
There was also a girls MLK Tournament at Grimes, where the girls Cobras, no. 13 in the state Class B rankings, nearly matched the boys with a first-place finish.
In the opening round, Grimes had little trouble with New Hartford, prevailing 49-31 against a Spartans side that, once 5-0, had gone 1-5 since star senior Kaia Henderson graduated early and headed to Ohio State University.
It was close until the second half, when the Cobras outscored New Hartford 31-16. Nayweil Ayeil led the way, pouring in 18 points as Rosalie Vincent added nine points and Natalie Musolino got six points.
In the final, it was Grimes against another Buffalo school, Cardinal O’Hara, who had beaten Marcellus 55-39, and the Cobras were unable to hang on to a late lead in a 42-40 defeat.
Steadily, Grimes had built a 25-20 advantage by halftime, but spent the entire second half struggling to find baskets against a stingy O’Hara defense.
Ayeil nearly equaled her total from the day before, earning 16 points as she and Jenna Sloan, who had seven points, were named to the All-Tournament team. Vincent contributed nine points.
