With the clock about to run out, J.J. Starling put himself in the perfect position, took the ball and shot it through the net.
The buzzer sounded and the Baldwinsville boys basketball team, on the brink of a damaging defeat, had defeated Liverpool and kept its hopes of an SCAC Metro division regular-season championship alive.
If all of this sounds familiar, well, it already happened once, on Jan. 7 at Onondaga Community College’s Allyn Hall.
Somehow, it happened again exactly four weeks later at Baker High School, and while the play was different and the action different, the result – B’ville rescuing itself by a single point – was the same, in this case 58-57.
Maybe it was all supposed to happen. For this game, the Bees donned throwback jerseys, but Starling’s normal no. 1 was not available, so he chose no. 33 – the number the late Kobe Bryant wore when he attended Lower Merion High School near Philadelphia in the mid-1990s.
Not wanting back-to-back defeats after a tough last-second loss at West Genesee on Jan. 31, B’ville played a solid first half against Liverpool, Starling carrying the attack again as the Bees were in front 33-29 at the break.
The Warriors turned it around, moving in front, 45-42, by the time the third period ended. Now it would go back and forth through the homestretch, Liverpool leading most of the way, but unable to get clear.
So it again rode on the final possession, again with B’ville down a point, though it was 57-56, a few more points than the first occasion, and here the Bees were expecting Liverpool to keep Starling from getting the ball.
The ball was inbounded to Bo Nicholson, who dribbled up the court and, as he went to the net, was stripped. A scramble followed, Chase Trombley got possession and quickly passed it to Starling, who had just enough time to gather himself and get it out of his hands before time expired.
The winning basket gave Starling 31 points for the night and made up for his miss in the waning seconds of the West Genesee game, too.
Nicholson gained 11 points, with Trombley and Dan Fabrizio each getting six points as Romeo Clarke (18 points) and Jacob Works (15 points) paced Liverpool.
With heavy snow postponing Friday’s game against Henninger, the Bees will play three times in the final full week of the regular season, going to Corcoran Tuesday and Fayetteville-Manlius next Thursday and then making up the Henninger game on Feb. 15 at 6:30.
