Up until the last day of November, the energy and talk surrounding the Baldwinsville boys basketball team centered around the potential of what the team could do under the guidance of new head coach Mike Lewis.
Now, though, that talk has turned into tangible results that will only make Bees fans more excited for what follows.
In Friday night’s season opener during the 15th annual Peppino’s Invitational at SRC Arena, B’ville took on Bishop Grimes and proved quite impressive, claiming a 64-57 victory over the Cobras.
Under the guidance of long-time coaching great Bob McKenney, Grimes reached the sectional Class A finals a season ago and returned a strong core of players from that team.
However, B’ville had its own fine core of proven varsity players back, and would assert themselves right from the outset against the Cobras thanks to Cam Weatherly’s 3-pointer to start the night.
Sparked also by seven early points from Jake Marshall, the Bees roared out in front 19-9 by the end of the first quarter, a needed cushion because Grimes fought back during the second period.
Were it not for the constant production of Weatherly, who had 13 of his 18 points in the first half, the Bees might have got into trouble. Instead, it carried a 30-26 lead to the break.
Then freshman J.J. Starling took over. Having emerged as a primary scoring threat for the Bees as an eighth-grader, Starling broke out in the third quarter with 12 points, half of his eventual game-high total of 24 points.
That pushed B’ville’s lead back to 49-38, and the likes of Starling, Weatherly and Marshall, who finished with 12 points, did enough to withstand another comeback attempt by the Cobras in the latter stages as T.J. Bradford (20 points) and Nate Gay (13 points) paced Grimes.
B’ville now would get a full week of more practice before resuming next Thursday at Auburn and then traveling next Saturday to Rome Free Academy in advance of a highly-anticipated home opener Dec. 11 against reigning state Class AA champion Liverpool.
