Onondaga — Denied in the Section III Class AA championship game a season ago, the Bishop Ludden boys basketball team got all the way to the top this time.
Yet as happy as the Gaelic Knights were defeating Liverpool 49-37 in Saturday night’s title game at SRC Arena, it knew that it was the benefactor of a stroke of fortune no one could have possibly foreseen.
It came less than 90 seconds into the contest. Ludden had scored the game’s first four points when Liverpool sophomore Naz Johnson converted on a leaning jumper – but in the process, his teammate, Tyler Sullivan, injured his ankle when he fell awkwardly under the Gaelic Knights’ basket.
No one on the Liverpool roster meant more than Sullivan, a senior point guard who was the team’s leading scorer (averaging nearly 20 points per game) and distributor (he also led his squad in assists), and unquestioned floor leader.
When the Warriors beat Ludden 83-64 on Dec. 27 in the final of the Rosemary Corcoran Holiday Classic, Sullivan had scored 29 points and was tournament MVP.
Now, though, Sullivan limped to the sideline and was taped up. He briefly returned early in the second quarter, but left again with 5:53 left in the half and did not play for the rest of the night.
“You root for a kid like Tyler,” said Ludden head coach Pat Donnelly. “His absence changed the whole complexion of the game.”
Even with Sullivan out, Liverpool still had a pair of dangerous 3-point threats in brothers Will and Nate Cutler, plus a solid inside rotation featuring Johnson, Devan Mederios and Cooper Chaffee.
Against them, Ludden applied tight man-to-man pressure, far different than the first meeting, when it tried a zone and got burned by the Warriors’ hot long-distance shooting.
Also, Donnelly said his team benefited from the experience it gained when it lost the 2015 sectional final to Henninger.
continued — “Last year, we got a taste of it, so we weren’t too nervous,” he said. “We were battle-tested.”
Fired up by Sullivan’s unexpected absence, Ludden hit plenty of outside shots in the first quarter which, combined with eight points from forward Chris Allen, helped the Gaelic Knights grab a 23-15 lead.
Gradually, the pace slowed, and that allowed the Warriors to hang close. Liverpool, trailing 31-22 at halftime, held the Gaelic Knights to just two field goals in the third quarter, moving within six, 35-29, so the issue was far from settled.
“They (Liverpool) didn’t fold,” said Donnelly. “They kept coming back.”
But unlike the Warriors, the Gaelic Knights still had its best player, sophomore Mika Adams-Woods, on the floor. And Adams-Woods would spark a fourth-quarter getaway with back-to-back steals and six of his 15 points during a decisive 10-1 run.
Allen finished with 10 points, while Joe Connor, with eight points, and Jim Grabowski, with six points, showed further support. Johnson not only led Liverpool with 11 points, he also used a series of blocked shots to anchor his team’s defense.
Perhaps lost in the main storyline about Sullivan was a remarkable feat accomplished by the Gaelic Knights – namely, that it won its fourth sectional title in five years, done in three different classes, having moved up from B in 2012 to A the next two years before this year’s AA triumph.
Next Saturday night, Ludden will face the Section II champion in the Class AA regional final at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, with the winner to advance to the March 12-13 state final four at Glens Falls Civic Center.
