East Aurora hands Neuqua first loss
East Aurora stole a win in front of a capacity crowd at Neuqua Valley on Saturday.
Tomcats phenom Ryan Boatright had 7 steals. His pal Letrell “Snoop” Viser had 5.
Domonique Johnson, however, had the biggest and last to deal Neuqua its first loss, 64-62, and give East Aurora the Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division lead.
Out of a timeout with 7.9 seconds left in the game, Neuqua Valley (14-1, 4-1) inbounded the ball in its offensive end. Before the Wildcats could swing it around the horn, Johnson intercepted a pass and dribbled down for a layup before the final horn.
“All the time, somebody else has got to step up. Every team has a third man,” said Johnson, who scored 8 points.
“Whoever's on the bench that night is going to step up, or a starter has got to step up because you can't always depend on them two (Boatright and Viser).”
East Aurora (12-2, 5-0) tied the score 62-62 with 19.5 seconds left on a drive by Connecticut recruit Boatright, who scored 32 points to Viser's 16. Neuqua Valley's last lead, 62-61, came on a Sam Johnson free throw with 34.9 seconds left.
“Not many people are talking about losing their first game at this point of the year,” said Sam Johnson, whose 16 points led Neuqua ahead of Tyler Sutton with 13 and Jim Stocki with 11.
“We're still in a good situation,” Johnson said. “We just can't get our heads down and we can't lose composure. We need to right the ship, go back on our winning ways and hopefully we just blow this one off and go back to how we've been playing.”
Granted, Boatright had a couple steal-and-dunk combos and East Aurora forced 22 turnovers with quick hands and trapping defense, but the Wildcats did most things well except win the game.
After scoring 88 points the night before, East Aurora trailed Neuqua 48-43 entering the fourth quarter. The Wildcats outrebounded East Aurora 30-21 even with post Alex Karkazis fouling out with 2 minutes, 38 seconds left to play.
“I think we moved really well in our 1-3-1 defense,” said Stocki, who played on top in that zone. “In the second half we started to get some weakside rebounds, we still could have done a better job with that. I don't think we took a charge tonight, which really ended up hurting us.”
East Aurora entered thrilled with a chance to knock off the Wildcats in Naperville, and led 18-17 after a quarter.
“We was amped up,” Boatright said. “We was excited, all rattling and raving at the school before this, rapping and all, laughing and stuff like that. But we was focused at the same time.”
Neuqua Valley coach Todd Sutton said two weeks of preparation went into Saturday's game. Round 2 comes Feb. 10, in Aurora.
“You could learn from it and get better or not learn from it and make the same mistakes again, and they'll smash us over at their place. So, hopefully it's a learning experience,” Sutton said.