Greiter, Bartlett stun East Aurora

Bartlett guard David Greiter was catching grief from all of his friends heading into Friday night’s game against East Aurora.

The reason Greiter was catching flak was because Connecticut signee Ryan Boatright scored 39 points as the Tomcats beat the Hawks 66-59 back on December 16.

This time was a little different as Boatright was held to 16 points on 7-of-27 shooting as Bartlett (13-13, 3-6) won 60-53 in an Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division boys basketball game at East Aurora.

Greiter, who guarded Boatright for almost the entire game, had a number in his head that he wanted to keep Boatright under.

“My friends were telling me he was going to drop 50 on me tonight,” Greiter said. “My goal was to hold him under 30 points. Actually, earlier in the day I told my sister I was going to hold him to 20. But I cannot take all the credit because it was just a great team effort defensively. This was a huge win against a great team and maybe the best player in the state.”

The dangerous tandem of Boatright and Snoop Viser were held in check most of the game as the duo combined to score 36 points but shot a combined 14-of-44 from the floor.

“We knew that we can defend against this team,” Bartlett head coach Jim Wolfsmith said. “In the first game when Boatright went off, we made him take tough shots. Tonight, every shot they took as a team was contested. Snoop was able to hit some 3s early, but we played overall great team defense.”

Bartlett jumped out to an early 11-3 lead and never trailed in the second half. With just over 3 minutes left in the game, Bartlett’s lead was cut to 52-48 on a Viser 3-pointer, but that was the closest the Tomcats (14-5, 7-2) were able to get the rest of the way.

“I thought we were going to get a run there in the second half,” East Aurora coach Wendell Jeffries said. “We never got one. We were able to score but we were not able to force them to turn the ball over. They really took care of the ball and didn’t allow us to open up a run. They did exactly what their coach asked them to do. They played well tonight.”

Bartlett had three players reach double-digits in the win as Matt Chatlin scored a team-high 17 points and Lance Whitaker and Greiter each chipped in with 10 points respectively.