Hampton Bays Boys Basketball Looks To Get Out of Current Rut

The Hampton Bays boys basketball team seems to be one of streaks and spurts this season. The Baymen won their first two games of the season only to lose their next four. Then, after winning another pair of games, they lost back-to-back games again.

After losing, 49-48, at Harborfields on January 10, when the Tornadoes scored in the game’s final 10 seconds to win the game, Hampton Bays returned home on Friday night to host Mount Sinai and suffered a 77-55 loss. The losses dropped Hampton Bays to 2-3 in League V play, 4-5 overall, but head coach Noah Brown isn’t panicking, and doesn’t think his players should either.

“It’s a game of streaks, and it’s kind of a season of streaks. Sometimes you’re in a little bit of a cold streak,” he said after Friday night’s game. “We have 10 games left. We could legitimately go 10-0 or 0-10. The league is balanced. Depends who’s hot, who’s not. We still have a pathway to the playoffs.

“We’ve got to get six more league wins, and they’re there,” Brown continued. “We can beat anybody. Mount Sinai, John Glenn, these are cream of the crop schools, tough games, but next time we play them we’ll game plan a little bit different and we’re there. We started 0-2 in league, we got it to 2-2. Now we’re 2-4, we’ve got to bring it back to 4-4. Especially when you have that balance, the parity within the league. You have to take advantage of games that you can win. I feel these guys will come together and we’ll get there.”

The Baymen had wins over Shoreham-Wading River, Eastport-South Manor, Islip and perennially talented Kings Park, and they brought neighboring district Westhampton Beach, which is second in League IV this season, to overtime. But, as Brown said, his team seems to be a bit streaky, not only in final results, but in game play as well.

The Baymen led Harborfields, 18-9, after the first quarter of that game only to go ice cold from the field thereafter. That poor shooting pretty much carried over to Friday night’s game against Mount Sinai, which in recent years has been very formidable, but which Brown and Co. thought it could beat, especially at home. But after both teams played to a 16-16 tie after the first quarter, the Mustangs took over the game and started to hit their shots, forcing Hampton Bays to play more up tempo than they prefer. The Baymen had a hard time setting anything up on offense and relied on a lot of forced three-point shots instead of attacking the basket and getting to the foul line.

“They did a good job of switching from man to man to a 2-3 matchup zone, where they were double teaming the ball,” Brown said of Mount Sinai. “James Powers is our main ball handler. When the ball leaves his hands, we need to either pass it quick or shoot. We’re light on ball handlers when it comes to that situation, and we were a little bit exposed there tonight on that.

“Our shots weren’t dropping in that second half, really in the first half, also,” he added. “We ran into a cold streak against Harborfields and it kind of just rolled into tonight. Our 1-3-1 worked really well in the first quarter. They had a lot of turnovers that kept us in the game, kept us in transition, which is really our game. We were getting out and running and not settling for threes. Teams will pack it in and force you to shoot and you’ll have to knock down some to stretch the defense, and we just couldn’t do that tonight.”

Patrick Donahue, a senior, scored a team-high 17 points, while fellow senior Isaiah Lattanzio scored 16. Powers, another senior, chipped in with eight points, while seniors Danny Wilson and Frank Galeas each scored seven points. And that was it for the Baymen, who got no contributions offensively from their reserves. Mount Sinai’s Dominic Pennzello scored a game-high 24 points, which included three three-pointers. His back-to-back threes in the final two minutes of the third quarter stretched the Mustangs’ lead to 52-35 forcing Brown to call a timeout and regroup.

Hampton Bays tried to get back on track at Miller Place on Tuesday evening, is scheduled to host Sayville this Thursday, January 18, at 5:45 p.m. and will host Wyandanch nearly a week later on January 24 at 6:45 p.m.