Southampton Boys Basketball Wins Suffolk County Class B Championship

After a pandemic-shortened season last year, there were many unknowns coming in to this winter. Teams were going to certainly look different, with players having graduated and having not played a full campaign in two years.

But the Southampton boys basketball team made it clear halfway through this season that it was going to be a force to be reckoned with as it continued to pile up the wins. With all due respect to opposing teams, the Mariners made one thing clear: it wasn’t a question of whether they were going to win a Suffolk County Class B Championship, but a matter of when.

That time came this past Saturday at Sachem East High School, when the Mariners took on Babylon. The No. 3 Panthers, to their credit, upset No. 2 Mattituck in the county semifinal after having lost to the Tuckers by about 20 points each game during the regular season. And they gave the Mariners a fight on Saturday, but ultimately, when it came down to getting timely baskets and key stops on defense, Southampton was simply too much, taking the game, 71-48, and with it a county title.

With Saturday’s victory, the Mariners advanced in the Section XI Tournament and will play Pierson in the B/C/D qualifier game at Longwood High School at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1. In its quest for a state title, Southampton will play the Nassau County “B” Champion, which is still to be determined, in the Long Island Championship on March 9 at Centereach High School at 6 p.m.

Southampton last won a county championship in 2017 as an “A” school after having won the “B” title the three years previous to that. While five years between county championships isn’t long for most schools, many of the current players were champing at the bit to etch their name in the program’s rich history — and they did just that with Saturday’s victory.

“On top of the world,” said senior co-captain LeBron Napier, who scored a game-high 30 points to go along with 12 rebounds. “I’ve been waiting four years for this moment, and we finally got it. Extremely happy. I don’t even know what to say, I’m speechless.”

“It feels amazing,” added junior co-captain Derek Reed, who was a vital piece to the Mariners’ victory with 21 points and eight assists. “I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a little kid. It’s crazy. Unreal. It feels so unreal.”

Southampton made it clear from the opening tip-off that it was going to be relentless on defense and make Babylon work hard for every point it got. Once their shots started to fall, the Mariners then started to widen the gap, taking a 20-9 lead into the second quarter, which then ballooned to 36-21 by the time the two teams went to the locker rooms at the half.

Playing a smothering-type of defense, though, can sometimes have its drawbacks, particularly when it comes to foul trouble, and Southampton certainly found itself having that issue in the third quarter. Three of the Mariners’ starting five — senior co-captains Ryan Smith and Andrew Venesina and freshman Naevon Jenkins (13 points, seven rebounds) — were all in deep foul trouble just minutes into the second half. With 33.3 seconds in the third, Venesina was called for his fifth foul and was done for the day. Then, with 2:32 remaining in the game, Jenkins fouled out.

With more than half their starters in foul trouble, the Mariners simply relied on their two horses in Napier and Reed, who looked unstoppable at times early in the fourth, after Babylon had closed its deficit to 11 points late in the third. Reed struck for a traditional three-point play with 5:19 remaining in the game, which actually forced one of Babylon’s starters to foul out. Then Napier had a pair of traditional three-point plays himself that stretched Southampton’s lead to 64-31.

“I know we have a starting five full of scorers, but when it’s crunch time, you give it to who needs the ball,” Reed said of helping the team fuel its offense.

With the game well out of reach, Babylon subbed out its starters and about a minute later Southampton head coach Herm Lamison followed suit.

Lamison gave credit to his players for working hard over the past year to get to where they are now as county champs.

“Everybody’s had to deal with the COVID issue, but these kids have been working. They’ve been working from day one,” he said. “We started out last spring working, went through summer league, went through training this summer, went through fall league, fall league workouts, and these guys were here. Today is a testament to the work and the time that they put in.

“We got more, we want more,” he added. “This is the big first step, big first hurdle we had to jump over.”

Moving forward, Napier said the team needs to focus on staying out of foul trouble, but at the same time, he and his head coach added that it needs to stay locked in defensively. Although he didn’t outright say it, Lamison seemed perturbed at the way the game was called on Saturday.

“I’d like to bring the officials into our practices because we really do practice defense and not fouling,” Lamison said. “We’re not reaching, we’re not leaning. We’re just trying to play defense the right way.

“Irregardless, I’m just happy that the kids continue to work hard. They never stop.”

A big East End showdown looms between Southampton and Pierson, the winner moving on in the county tournament against the Class A champion for the Small Schools title. The Mariners handed the Whalers, the Class C Champion who defeated Class D Champion Bridgehampton on Saturday in the C/D qualifier, their only loss this season. While the B/C/D qualifier is typically won by the larger “B” schools, it is not going to be an easy game against a very deep, tall and athletic Pierson team, and Lamison is well aware of that. Regardless of a win or loss in that game, Southampton will still have its Long Island Championship to play for about a week later.

“Pierson is a very strong team. I have a lot of respect for their team this year,” he said. “They really are running on all cylinders and we’re going to try and get prepared for them. And then when we get to the Long Island game, we’ll get to that and try and represent as best we can.”