Ever since the night of Dec. 29, when Christian Brothers Academy’s boys basketball team rained down 11 3-pointers on Jamesville-DeWitt in the opening round of the Bottar-Leone Holiday Classic, the Red Rams have awaited to reunite with the Brothers and try to get even.
They’ll do so on Tuesday night, and both sides in good form after wins on Friday night.
CBA halted Cortland’s 10-game win streak with a timely second-half run and big numbers from Monte Stroman in a 69-59 victory over the Purple Tigers to improve to 10-2 on the season.
Meanwhile, J-D visited Homer, got a career-best performance from Isaiah Williams and, like CBA, broke out of trouble with its own second-half surge to beat the much-improved Trojans 80-62.
Of the two games, the Brothers’ battle with Cortland drew more attention. Though the Purple Tigers had won 10 in a row, it had not faced any of the OHSL Freedom division front-runners (CBA, J-D and Bishop Ludden), as it would during the regular-season homestretch.
Still, CBA had reason to be wary, as Cortland demonstrated by making plenty of outside shots and leading for most of the first quarter. To counter it, the Brothers turned to its own dormant perimeter game, which woke up at a good time.
Aided by seven 3-pointers, CBA gained a 37-26 lead late in the second quarter. But Cortland fought back, getting baskets from Chris Luke and Nick Craig to chip away at that margin.
And when Craig sank a 3-pointer just past the midway point of the third quarter, the Purple Tigers had tied the Brothers, 41-41. And that was Cortland’s last point until the final period.
Picking up defensive pressure, CBA wore down the Purple Tigers while, at the same time, Stroman and Jack Carey kept finding seams within Cortland’s matchup zone and converted.
All told, the Brothers went on an 18-0 run, shutting out the Purple Tigers for more than six minutes, and Stroman made sure Cortland didn’t rally, continuing to convert until he had put up a season-high 27 points.
“Monte can do that,” said CBA head coach Buddy Wleklinski. “He’s very active and dynamic, and when he shoots well, he’s awful tough to guard.”
The same can be said for J-D’s Williams, who along with Dom DeRegis has led the way for J-D throughout the winter.
Both of them, along with the rest of the Red Rams, have carried the memory of that 83-64 defeat at CBA for more than a month, awaiting that second chance. First, though, it had to stop a Homer team that, at 6-7, was not the pushover of seasons past.
During an energetic first half, anything that the Rams put up, the Trojans would answer. That translated to a 16-16 first-quarter tie, and despite J-D going in front in the second period, it only had a 33-31 edge going to the break.
Whatever was said at halftime seemed to register, for in the third quarter Williams and his teammates caught fire, outscoring Homer 27-8 to turn a tense game into a more relaxed affair.
Even without making a 3-pointers, Williams proved unstoppable, pouring in 29 points that included 11 field goals and seven successful free throws. James Boeheim, with 13 points, offered the most support, while DeRegis had eight points, Matt Carlin seven points and Jacob Eich six points.
J-D and CBA will play on Tuesday night as part of a girls-boys doubleheader. The J-D girls routed Homer 60-10 on Friday night, but CBA lost, 50-38, to Cortland.
