It was crucial for the Fayetteville-Manlius girls basketball team to recover from its Jan. 22 defeat at West Genesee and get some victories before the tough regular-season homestretch in early February.

Hosting Corcoran last Monday night to make up a snowed-out game from a week earlier, the Hornets were back to its usual stingy self on the defensive side, which proved the key to beating the Cougars 55-33.

F-M had won at Corcoran 45-26 in December, and little had changed since then, except the Hornets’ unlikely rise into the state Class AA rankings.

The rematch saw F-M produce plenty in the first half, amassing a 33-16 lead, which gave it a chance to go through a third-quarter slump and still hold Corcoran to six points in that frame to prevent any hopes of a Cougar comeback.

D’Jhai Patterson-Ricks proved unstoppable, not only scoring 21 points, but adding six rebounds, five assists and three steals. Alexis Gray got 10 points, eight rebounds and three steals, while Carly Assimon added eight points. Alexis Schneider contributed five rebounds off the bench. Corcoran’s top scorer, Llyneasa Oliver, had just eight points.

Then F-M made it back-to-back wins against city foes on Friday night, going to Henninger and prevailing 46-31 in a game where it blanked the Black Knights during a 15-0 second quarter to take a 29-8 halftime lead. Patterson-Ricks finished with 16 points as Gray and Abbey Harris both earned eight points and Elizabeth Hall added six points.

When the F-M boys basketball team welcomed defending Section III Class AA champion Henninger last Friday night for its annual “Pink Out” event to raise money and awareness for breast-cancer research, it did so coming off back-to-back games that resulted in a split.

To start its week, F-M had its own makeup with Corcoran, a task that proved too difficult to finish as it lost, 55-44, to the Cougars.

Ironically, Corcoran’s previous game was a double-overtime loss to Henninger, and that result made the Cougars quite focused for this game, especially on defense, where it proved just as stingy as it was when F-M lost to them 65-47 in early December.

The Hornets had just 16 total points in the second and third periods, seeing Corcoran pull away, and could not recover from that despite 13 points from David Stegemann and 12 points and seven rebounds from Fernando Johnson. Tyler Papa had eight points and nine rebounds as Tim Zapisek got eight rebounds, but was held to eight points.

Defensively, F-M did a good job containing Corcoran’s 1,000-point scorer, Marquis Gilbert, holding him to 14 points, but other Cougars made up for it, especially Jahaad Henry, who earned 17 points, and Tim Tatum, who finished with 10 points.

Just 24 hours later, the Hornets were back home to face Nottingham, and even this one didn’t prove easy, but F-M pulled it out, going to overtime to edge the Bulldogs 47-45 and move within a single victory of clinching a playoff spot.

Trailing early, F-M controlled the game’s middle stages, outscoring Nottingham 26-16 in the second and third periods. Yet even that couldn’t put the Bulldogs away as the visitors overcame its own 34-28 deficit in the fourth quarter to tie it, 43-43, and force the extra period.

Cold in that OT session, the Hornets escaped as it held Nottingham to two points in four minutes. Zapisek still had 15 points and 11 rebounds, while Papa added 11 points and seven boards. Johnson contributed 10 points as Quinton Williams led the Bulldogs with 13 points.

And then Henninger arrived on Friday, with a defense that would bother F-M all night long, leading to a 56-31 defeat.

For a while, the Hornets would keep it close, only trailing 14-11 after one period. But then it scored just four points in the second quarter, unable to take advantage of Henninger’s own cold shooting, and then it saw the Black Knights make a 21-11 push through the third quarter to put it out of reach.

Zapisek led with just nine points, adding five rebounds. Stegemann had eight points and five rebounds, with Nick Perry getting five points and five rebounds. Henninger star Destin Blunt put together a triple-double of 15 points and 12 rebounds.

F-M fell to 7-10 with that loss, still with a chance to get into the post-season if it beat Liverpool, Baldwinsville or Cicero-North Syracuse in its last three regular-season contests.