Boys Basketball: Yorktown Defeats Brewster

Yorktown (6-3) entered its game against visiting Brewster  (5-3) in its Jan. 11 contest with a lot on its mind as head coach Steve Veteri wasn't there with the team. Veteri's father had passed away two days earlier after a long battle with cancer.

Against the Bears, the Huskers were coached by their assistant Jamie Procino, who is a former Husker star and 2004 YHS graduate. With Procino at the helm, the Huskers nipped the Bears in a huge-league game 44-41.

Procino said he had been in this situation before during his playing days at Yorktown when coach Veteri's mother died.

"The team is taken it in stride," Procino said. "Coach Veteri did a great job of preparing us for this. We spoke as a team last week about this so everyone knew that if this were the case, everyone knew what was going to happen."

Procino said the team knew things would go on as planned. 

"When I was actually a sophomore his mother died suddenly, it was the day before our first game," Procino said. "It really threw us for a loop for about a month or so as team so he didn't want that same thing to happen again."

The first quarter, like the game itself, was a defensive battle, with Yorktown leading 9-8 at the end of it. Leading the Huskers in that quarter was Jordan Moody, who scored all of the Huskers nine points in the opening stanza and led the team with 18 on the night.

"Statistically, it wasn't his best game but he had a level head out there, rallying the guys in practice and during the game," Procino said. "He was a vocal presence on the floor for us when we needed to settle down. That was important because there were some guys that weren't used to these situations."

Brewster coach John Martino was pleased with his team's defensive effort.

"We played (Dante) Dixon and Moody as tough as we possibly could man to man and then hoped to keep the other guys off the boards," Martino said. "We played them without help but I thought second-shot opportunities hurt us. But they are big, long and athletic. I thought we played a good game."

Leading the Bears was Jack Dignan, who tallied a game-high 21 points and scored four points in the first quarter. Teammate Mike Bonilla also put up two field goals in the first.

"Jack has been our go-to guy all year," Martino said. "He had the kind of game that I expected him to have."

Highlighting the second quarter was a dunk by Aidan Fullerton who gave Yorktown a 21-15 lead late in the quarter that brought the house down and sent the Huskers vaunted cheering section, "The Crop", into a frenzy.

A Terell Patterson free-throw before the end of the half cut Yorktown's lead to 21-16 at halftime.

Martino credited Yorktown's stingy defense for the reason that his squad was being held down offensively.

"We played hard but we didn't shoot very well," Martino said. "Part of that was Yorktown's length, I thinked that bothered us. It was a physical, well-played game. Obviously, with the intense defense that was going on, there were turnovers by both teams. But both teams played very hard. They won the game, we didn't lose it."

A key play in helping the Huskers win the game came in the fourth quarter with less then a minute to go when Chris Schmitz got a great feed from Moody to finish off a fast break, giving Yorktown a 42-41 lead it wouldn't relinquish.

"Brewster is one of those teams that is contending for the league," Procino said. "They are physical, they have shooters, they have scorers. It was real important for us to come out with a win today."

POINT TOTALS

Brewster-Jack Dignan (21), Mike Bonilla (6), Terell Patterson (5), Alex Goudey (4), Ryan Mahoney (3), Andrew Sniffen (2)

Yorktown-Jordan Moody (18), Dante Dixon (7), Chris Mosca (7), Chris Schmitz (6), Adian Fullerton (4), Alex Poritzky (2)