As they zoom toward next Friday’s pair of rematches with Jamesville-DeWitt, each of the Christian Brothers Academy basketball teams are in top form – and one player in particular managed to make a bit of history on Friday night.
During the CBA girls’ 67-54 victory over East Syracuse-Minoa, senior guard Marisa Romeo notched career point no. 1,000, just a small part of an extraordinary three-sport tenure.
Bound for Harvard, Romeo has stood out in basketball, soccer and lacrosse, and led CBA’s girls lacrosse side to back-to-back state final four appearances and the 2011 state Class C championship.
Now Romeo is set on trying to deliver a basketball title for CBA. In the girls game at ESM, the Brothers were facing an ESM side it defeated 57-45 back on Dec. 11. The rematch would end up with a similar margin, but with more points on the board for both sides.
Romeo entered the night with 995 points and quickly hit a jumper to get two points closer to the milestone.
Then, barely three minutes into the game, when she made a free throw to complete an old-fashioned three-point play, the 1,000-point mark was reached, and her teammates congratulated while the fans in the ESM gym stood and cheered.
With that out of the way, CBA started to pull clear in the second quarter, when it outscored the Spartans 19-11 to stretch its advantage to 34-22 at the break.
And a 15-6 run to open the second half added a further cushion before ESM made a belated push behind the work of forward Gabby Eure.
All Eure did was set a career mark by pouring in 32 points. But Eure got little help, other than the occasional baskets from Stephanie Edmonds (10 points) and Nicole Cassella (seven points).
Romeo almost matched Eure and finished with 29 points, but had more pronounced support from fast-improving freshman Natalie Nardella, who earned 16 points, and Julie Cuomo, who threw in 12 points.
As this went on, CBA’s boys side, not looking ahead to Sunday’s “Holy War” revival with Bishop Ludden, had a chance to climb to the .500 mark – and did so, beating ESM 50-38.
The Brothers won its fourth straight game – and at the same time,it avenged a 59-51 defeat at ESM back on that same Dec. 11 where the girls had prevailed.
Mostly, the Brothers accomplished this through stifling, in-your face defense. CBA’s man-to-man pressure drove ESM into a series of mistakes in the early going as the Spartans got just five points in the first quarter and could never fully recover.
Leading 22-13 at halftime, the Brothers steadily maintained that margin in the last two periods through the work of Charlie Russo, who again led the attack as he got 22 points, nearly half his team’s output.
Up front, Jack Pfohl stood out, with 10 rebounds to go with his seven points. Billy Burns also had seven points as Jake Wilcox got eight points and Dylan Lambert had six points. ESM’s Sean Richardson led both sides with 19 points as he and Eyan Underwood (11 points) accounted for all but two of the Spartans’ field goals.
