by E.Jay Zarett
At last, the Liverpool boys basketball team got the best of Bishop Ludden.
The no. 4 seed Warriors used a 7-0 Cooper Chaffee run midway through the fourth quarter to pull away from the top-seeded Gaelic Knights in Saturday night’s Section III Class AA semifinal at SRC Arena and ultimately prevailed by a 60-54 margin.
With the score tied 50-50 and 5:35 left, Chaffee finished a lay-up in traffic to tilt the scoreboard back in the fourth-seeded Warriors favor. He then scored the game’s next five points, and Ludden never recovered.
“That’s what he can do,” Liverpool head coach Ryan Blackwell said about Chaffee’s performance. “We’ve been telling him for two years. When he’s aggressive and just plays his game, that’s what he does for us. Tonight, as a senior, he didn’t want to lose.”
Chaffee had a similar run in the first half. The Warriors jumped out to an 11-point lead late in the first quarter and ended the period with a 21-12 advantage.
Ludden whittled away at the deficit and, midway through the second period, a 3-pointer by Keandre Sanders brought the Gaelic Knights within two. Then Chaffee responded with three straight baskets in the paint to widen Liverpool’s margin to eight, 30-22.
“We felt in practice throughout the week before that we could really get the ball inside,” Chaffee said. “(Do a) pump fake, go in, draw some contact. That’s just how I attacked.”
The Gaelic Knights responded with an 8-3 run over the next four minutes and headed into halftime trailing by just three, 33-30. Then Ludden kept up their momentum following the break, tying the game 41-41 and taking the lead one possession later when Mika-Adams Woods drained a 3-pointer.
A 3-pointer by Joe Connor with just under two minutes to go in the third quarter gave Ludden a 48-42 advantage, its largest of the game. But in a crucial sequence, Liverpool scored the next six points to tie it, and went back in front for good with Chaffee’s late surge.
“Our kids are very resilient,” Blackwell said. “We’ve had a lot of tough games all season. So they didn’t panic through this situation.”
Chaffee—who entered play averaging 6.3 points per game—finished with 19 total points in the contest.
“It was huge,” Chaffee said. “It was a team effort, but to be able to rise (up) a little bit was big.”
Not giving up, Ludden whittled the Warriors’ lead to three, but with 36 seconds left Charles Pride corralled an offensive rebound and converted the basket to secure the victory. He totaled 13 points in the contest.
The payback for Liverpool was twofold. Ludden had topped them 49-37 on this same court in last year’s sectional final, and again on Dec. 3 in the same Onondaga Community College complex, though at Allyn Hall.
In defeat, Adams-Woods tallied a game-high 26 points to lead Ludden, while Connor added 11.
The Warriors return to SRC Arena Sunday night at 6:30 in search of its first sectional title since 1999 and will face no. 6 seed Henninger, who knocked off no. 2 seed West Genesee 63-59 in the other semifinal. After a 3-7 start, the Black Knights have won 11 of 12, including a 55-47 win at Liverpool on Jan. 31.
