Richmond too tall for Burlington Central
Burlington Central's student section was dead silent, besides a few squeaks and gasps, for the first 6 minutes of Tuesday night's boys basketball game against Richmond-Burton. That's how long it took the Rockets to score 10 points and the crowd to erupt in a tradition known as Silent Night.
Their jubilation was short-lived, however, as Richmond-Burton went up by 9 at the half and Burlington Central could not hit its shots in a 61-48 Big Northern East loss at Rocket Hill.
After ending the first quarter in a 12-12 tie, the only quarter in which it led, Burlington Central (6-3, 2-1) found itself on the wrong side of a 6-0 run to start the second. Compounding the problem was a defensive shutdown by Richmond-Burton's two big men down low.
Joe St. Pierre (6-foot-9) and Reggie Banks (6-6) controlled the paint for much of the game for Richmond, causing problems for Central's leading scorer Ryan Fitzpatrick and redirecting most of the shots that came near them. Central ended the quarter 2-for-8 from the field and added 2 free throws to finish with 6 points in the quarter and was down 27-18 going into the half.
"(St. Pierre and Banks) are going to make a lot teams have poor nights shooting," Central coach Brett Porto said. "You add in (Sam) Kaufman whose 6-5 and they really have three tremendous shot blockers. We didn't do a good job early on with our shot fakes and ball fakes."
Fitzgerald echoed his coach's sentiments saying, "We knew going in that (St. Pierre) liked to try and block us when we went up. We didn't pump fake at all in the first half, then in the second we started to do it more and it worked."
Fitzgerald had a team-high 14 points but just 2 by halftime. He caught fire in the second half by capitalizing on Richmond turnovers, scoring 8 in the fourth quarter. That effort would be in vain as everyone else had trouble finding the bottom of the net.
Zach Schutta and Drew Wiss, who each had 11 points and a pair of 3-pointers, went a combined 1-for-5 behind the arc in the fourth as the Rockets fought to get back in it. Stefan Jochum added 8 points.
It looked as though Central could get back in it after hitting three 3-pointers in the third, but Richmond-Burton (6-2, 2-0) went on an 11-3 run at the end of the quarter to pull 14 points ahead and put the game out of reach.
St. Pierre had 18 points for the game along with 7 blocked shots and 5 rebounds while Banks finished with 15 points and 5 rejections.
Despite the loss, Porto liked what he saw from his team at the end of the game.
"We have some younger guys, but if we can get that last 10 minutes of effort for an extended game next time we see them, maybe we will get a different result," he said.