In the span of two weeks, the Baldwinsville boys basketball team would go up against all of the sides sporting the best records in the Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division.
What began with a narrow defeat at home to Cicero-North Syracuse on Jan. 9 continued a week later at Henninger, with the Bees quite competitive most of the way, but still falling 71-56 to the Black Knights.
B’ville didn’t get discouraged when Henninger jumped out to a 22-9 lead by the end of the first quarter. Over the course of the next two periods, the Bees outscored the Black Knights 33-26, making things close.
Yet it couldn’t carry over to the fourth quarter, where Henninger got away thanks to a well-balanced attack that put Jadan Graves (16 points), Dujardin Sojo (15 points), Travis Grey (13 points) and Jonah Alston (12 points) in double figures.
Jacob Marshall, in defeat, led all scorers with 20 points. Jon Starling added 14 points, but no other B’ville player had more than the seven points put up by Eric Casey. Alec Williams got six points.
In a non-league game Thursday night, the Bees visited New Hartford, a team that had not yet recovered from seeing star forward Frankie Policeli transfer to Long Island Lutheran last summer
Proving too much for the Spartans, the Bees prevailed, 84-52, to end its brief skid, steadily taking apart New Hartford’s defense while managing to build a 46-30 halftime lead, and then improving on defense in the second half with that big margin.
Starling and Maxwell Dec each hit three 3-pointers as Starling finished with 21 points and Dec had a season-best 11 points. In between them, Marshall earned 16 points as Casey got 10 points. Sunday Joshua had eight points and Williams gained six points.
Back home 24 hours later, B’ville took on Corcoran, who had put a scare into unbeaten, state Class AA no. 7-ranked Liverpool in its previous game, tied going to the fourth quarter before the Warriors prevailed.
But even though the Bees had beaten the Cougars 68-55 the first time they met in December, and now were playing on its home court, B’ville could not equal that earlier effort, falling to Corcoran 76-74.
Ultimately, the Bees paid for a poor first half. Corcoran led 43-26 by intermission, getting a big effort from De’jour Reaves, who finished with 27 points as D.J. Haynes got 14 points and Daimarr Miller had 12 points.
B’ville tried to cut into the margin in the second half, but didn’t find much success. Starling led with 21 points, including three 3-pointers, as Marshall earned 14 points and Williams contributed 11 points.
Two days of weekend rest preceded the clash with Liverpool Monday that got snowed out on Jan. 12, just before B’ville hosts Fayetteville-Manlius Wednesday and visits West Genesee Friday night.
