Not even two minutes had elapsed in Tuesday night’s highly-anticipated boys basketball showdown between Jamesville-DeWitt and East Syracuse Minoa, and the game’s pattern was well-established.
Three different times in those opening possessions, the Red Rams had put up 3-point shots, two of them by Trey Autry, the other by Payton Shumpert. All of them swished through the net.
Combined with a basket from Matt Cieplicki, that made it 11-0 – and J-D would keep going from there, battering the Spartans with a season-best 15 3-pointers and eventually prevailing by a score of 91-57.
Everything about this game was a byproduct of what happened when these teams first met Jan. 10 at J-D, when ESM slowed down the game’s tempo and, in the final seconds, got two clutch steals from Naiche Cook, plus the winning free throws, to gain a 49-47 victory.
And though the Rams had won seven in a row since that defeat, it remembered quite well the sight of ESM players and students celebrating on their home floor and did not want a repeat of it.
Adding further motivation was the fact that the Spartans were in the state Class A rankings at no. 23 and the Rams were unranked. That was likely to change after J-D was done with its long-range barrage.
The Rams nearly matched its point total from that first meeting by halftime, building most of its 46-26 margin by hitting on 11 3-pointers, everything from Autry’s early strikes to Payton and Preston Shumpert connecting to Cieplicki banking one in midway through the second quarter.
Try as it could, ESM just could not keep up, even as Cook put together a season-best total of 21 points. Nick Peterson, back after missing two games due to illness, worked hard for his 12 points as Devin Mascato-Buffaloe had eight points.
Though it only hit four 3-pointers in the second half, the Rams kept adding to its lead, Cieplicki finishing with 23 points, just ahead of Payton Shumpert’s 21 points as Preston Shumpert got 15 points, Gunther Schnorr contributed 10 points and Matt Bradford had eight points.
Earlier that night, J-D’s girls basketball team won 56-24 over ESM, remaining undefeated in the SCAC Metro division.
Sydney Baker, who recently returned to the Rams’ lineup, led her side with 12 points, while Paige Keeler earned 11 points, J-D bouncing back well after a 65-42 loss to New Hampshire’s Bishop Guertin on Feb. 1.
