Reed, Second-Half Defense Propels Southampton Boys Basketball To Win Its Host Mariner Athletic Club Holiday Classic

Last season, as a junior, Derek Reed watched as Riverhead won his team’s host basketball tournament, the Mariner Athletic Club Classic. He wasn’t about to let that happen again.

In the first game of the two-night tournament on Friday, December 16, Reed scored a career-high and new single-game record 47 points to lead the Southampton boys basketball team to a 94-51 victory over Riverhead. Then, in the finals the next night against East Hampton — a rematch from just a week ago in the Kendall Madison Tip-Off Classic, which Southampton won — Reed poured in 39 points once again leading the Mariners to an 84-40 victory over the Bonackers.

With those two back-to-back performances, Reed was the clear Most Valuable Player of the tournament and took home that award. His teammates, sophomores Tyson Reddick, who scored 17 points in the win over East Hampton, and Naevon Williams, who scored 16, were both named to the All-Tournament Team. Reed’s 47 points against Riverhead surpassed his previous best of 40 scored last season against Center Moriches, and which had tied D’Angelo Smith’s previous record of 40 scored in the 2009-2010 season.

“I think the Riverhead game was more so personal because we lost last year,” Reed said of his Friday night performance. “I had to go out senior year with some bragging rights. I just wanted to go out with a bang, and make coach happy.”

It certainly made his head coach, Herm Lamison, happy, being that his Mariners were down three starters against Riverhead and were ailing overall as a team with as many as seven players missing practice the day before with the flu. Freshman Alex Franklin, a potent scorer and starter, missed the tournament entirely, then sophomore Naevon Williams, who had been the team’s leading scorer coming into the tournament, and senior co-captain Tyler Blake both suffered ankle injuries early in Friday’s game forcing the senior Reed into a larger scoring role that he was obviously more than willing and able to handle.

Reed scored 15 points in the first quarter against Riverhead, 16 in the second, 10 in the third, and with the game in hand, six in the fourth quarter. In addition, Reed nearly had the impressive quadruple-double with 11 assists, nine rebounds and eight steals.

“When you think about it, he had to make up for Naevon, who was leading us in the scoring with 20 points per game. Alex was probably our third highest scorer with 12 points per game,” Lamison said. “Derek stepped up into a role that he had to fill. He’s just a special player.”

That’s not to say that the Mariners didn’t have other players step up, they most certainly did. Tyson Reddick, a sophomore, scored a career high of his own, 22 points, in the win, and his brother, Tyrese, also a sophomore, had seven points and 12 rebounds.

“We already only had eight kids on the bench, so we had guys playing out of position, playing roles that we really haven’t practiced with some of the guys, so it was kind of a scramble,” Lamison said. “But it kind of worked out in some ways, gave some guys some opportunities in different places and it could very well help us down the line.

“The guys were really helping each other,” he added. “They were coaching each other, which is always good to see from a coach’s standpoint. But that also builds camaraderie and team building, which is the most important thing this early in the season.”

Against East Hampton, Reed led the charge for Southampton in the third quarter, when the Mariners’ smothering defense led to a ton of easy transition points. He scored 18 of his 39 points in the third largely off fast-break layups. But even before then, Reed, and the Mariners as a whole, were making even contested shots.

In addition to its first league victory, 73-26, at Port Jefferson on December 14, Southampton has now won five in a row since losing both games at the season-opening Kings Park Tournament about a month ago. And as much of those wins have seen offensive outbursts, the team’s defense, particularly in the second half, has been tremendous. In those five wins, opposing teams have only averaged 14.2 second half points.

“That’s just playing a controlled defense, being in the position that they’re supposed to be in, and some of them are still not in the right position,” Lamison explained. “We’re still trying to work some things out. We still want to add and do better. But, it’s early in some ways — but, then again, it’s not. We’ve played a lot of games already and we still have two more games to finish out the year.

“We’ve been working since those two losses,” he added. “The kids really have been working hard in a lot of different ways — we moved some players around, tweaked some things — and we’re fortunate enough for the kids to buy into what we’re teaching. And they really haven’t even executed it as good as it has to be. We’re just trying to come out and play well, get ourselves to play consistently as we move forward and hopefully we’ll be where we want to be at the end of the season.”

The Mariners are scheduled to host Southold for a League V game this Thursday, December 22, at 6 p.m. Then they’ll play in the St. Anthony’s Holiday Classic on New Year’s Eve against Elmont. Out of the break, Southampton will have a key game against Pierson on January 4 in Sag Harbor at 6 p.m.