East Boys Basketball Loses Nail-Biter to Riverhead, 50-45

Despite sloppy ball handling and a poor shooting effort, East was still within one shot of the Riverhead Blue Waves in the final minute Tuesday night – but Jon Feiler’s jump shot with 45 seconds remaining was no good and Ben Edmund hit a clutch bucket for the Blue Waves with 12 seconds remaining to help secure a 50-45 victory.

East led 24-23 at the half, but the game turned when Riverhead turned up the defensive pressure, forcing the Bulls into mistakes and bad shots.

“We shot 16-of-61 from the field and had 16 turnovers, 10 in the first half,” East Head Coach Lou Gambeski said. “We were lucky to be within five points if you look at the stats.”

The Bulls three leading scorers – Dan Thixton with 13, Mike Napolitano with 12, and Feiler with 10 – turned the ball over four times each.

“We have a difficulty handling the ball, it’s our Achilles heel,” Gambeski said. “We work on it everyday in practice, we continue to work on it. All of these teams attack it.”

The lack of ball handling wasn’t lost on Riverhead Coach John Rossetti.

“We kind of saved that a little bit in our back pocket,” he said of the added defensive pressure. “We didn’t want to play all of our guards until the end.”

The Blue Waves used a 10-2 run in the second quarter to turn a 16-8 deficit into a 20-18 lead. From that point forward neither team was able to go ahead by more than five points until late in the fourth quarter.

The win puts the Blue Waves alone in third place at 4-2 in league III and drops the Bulls back to 3-3 and a tie for fourth.

“This was a hump game, trying to separate us from the pack,” Gambeski said. “Now we’re clumped up in the middle. Maybe we’ll look back at it and see we got over the tough spot.”

Riverhead's leading scorer Edmund led his team with 13 points and played a big part in pushing the Bulls back to the middle of the pack.

"It feels good, it’s hard to win on the road," he said. "It felt better as we got the pressure going, and it built our confidence, but you can’t get a big head and you have to keep playing hard and never let up."

The Bulls will be back on the floor against 1-8 Centereach Friday night ­ tip off is at 6:45 p.m.

“I already warned them,” Gambeski said of his team taking Centereach lightly. “Number one, they’re well coached. Number two, they play with a great deal of effort. Number three, it’s a Friday night. And number four, it’s in their gym. That’s enough right there to put us in a bad place. We have to come in with our A-game."