When the Jamesville-DeWitt boys basketball team topped Christian Brothers Academy on Dec. 7 at SRC Arena, it triggered a rough season-opening stretch for the Brothers that included four defeats in five games.
Little did anyone realize that, exactly three months after that first meeting and on that same Onondaga Community College court, the Red Rams will have to get past CBA again in order to repeat as Section III Class A champions.
They first had to navigate through sectional semifinals Friday night against local rivals, with J-D turning back no. 3 seed East Syracuse Minoa 56-46 and the no. 4 seed Brothers ending the unlikely post-season run of no. 8 seed Bishop Grimes by a score of 70-47.
In both instances, double-digit win streaks were maintained at the expense of the last teams to beat them. J-D had won 12 in a row since its last-second 49-47 defeat to ESM on Jan. 10, while CBA had claimed 10 in a row in the aftermath of the 58-44 loss to Grimes that gave Cobras head coach (and one-time Red Rams coach) Bob McKenney his 600th career win.
J-D had walloped the Spartans 91-57 when they met a second time earlier this month, hitting on 15 3-pointers, but this game more resembled the first meting in that ESM got the pace it wanted and the Rams had to adjust in order to succeed.
A close first half featured six lead changes, and J-D, despite 19 points by the brother tandem of Payton and Preston Shumpert, only led 25-24 at the break.
But in a span of less than a minute early in the third quarter, the Rams rattled off eight straight points, six of them off Matt Cieplicki’s pair of 3-pointers, to extend its lead to 33-24, and from there ESM would spend the rest of the game trying to chase J-D down.
What stopped them was a Rams defense that, according to head coach Jeff Ike, did a better job with on-ball pressure, forcing the Spartans outside and into low-percentage shots. For the night, ESM was 18-for-53 from the floor and only made two of its 14 3-point attempts.
Despite all this, the Spartans, with Nick Peterson getting six straight points, whittled down J-D’s lead to 46-41 late in the fourth quarter, only to have Cieplicki emerge again to get a key rebound basket with 2:03 left, and it never got as close again.
Payton Shumpert finished with 21 points and eight rebounds, while Preston Shumpert got 15 points. Cieplicki earned 10 of his 13 points in the second half and earned high praise from Ike.
“Matt is a great player,” said Ike. “he does all the little things and is such a warrior.”
ESM, whose season finished at 16-5, got 13 points and nine rebounds from Peterson and 14 points from Jimmy Ferns as Naiche Cook and Devin Mascato-Buffaloe had six points apiece.
Then it was CBA’s turn against BIshop Grimes, and the Brothers would never trail after an opening sequence where the Cobras were held without a field goal for the first six-plus minutes of the game.
Though Grimes did pick up its production late in the half, CBA used a pair of 6-0 runs to extend its margin to 33-23 early in the third period, this despite the Cobras out-rebounding them 19-9 in the first two periods.
The game’s critical sequence came near the end of that third quarter. Grimes had whittled the margin to two, 40-38, and appeared to have all the momentum – until Colin Kelly, who had 10 of his 17 points in that period, connected on a 3-pointer from the right corner at the horn.
Sparked by that shot, CBA put the game away with 13 unanswered points in a three-minute stretch of the final period. As has been the case throughout its turnaround from that 1-4 start, the Brothers’ defense sparked the entire effort as it held an opponent under 50 points for the sixth time in its 11-game win streak.
Aside from Kelly, Sam Haas led the Brothers with 16 points, 12 of them in the first half, while Dan Anderson had 11 points. For Grimes. A.J. Burnett led with 11 points and Ian Denton got 10 points.
And now the season completes its circle, CBA again confronting J-D, but with far more confidence than that early-December encounter as the sectional final is set to tip off Saturday night at 6 p.m.
“We’re glad to have that opportunity,” said Brothers head coach Buddy Wleklinski. “Our kids will show up and leave everything on the floor.”
