Good teams answer.
CB West’s Matt Engle just drilled a three, cutting host CB East’s lead to 38-36 with 2:22 remaining in Friday’s game. Engle’s sniping capped a 12-1 West run that violently shifted momentum toward the Buck partisans.
But East’s Justin DiRoberto answered, calmly drilling a corner three 36 seconds later.
“I was sitting there waiting for the ball. They crashed on Jake Cummiskey,” DiRoberto described. “He gave a great pass when he saw me in the corner, and I hit the shot. It was a big shot.”
When the Patriots followed with a Joey Giordano steal producing a Cummiskey layup, it gave East a three-score lead with 1:20 left and virtually secured their 49-38 victory.
“West runs a slow style. It’s different from what we run,” explained DiRoberto, who scored nine points. “It was a good adjustment to win against a team like that.”
West played an exceptional first quarter. The Bucks hit five of their first six shots and did not turn the ball over in the opening 10 minutes. Seven Engle points helped West lead 14-7 after one.
“Shots weren’t going in the first quarter and we got a little bit of the jitters,” Patriot Kyle Berndt said. “But we knew shots would fall if we kept shooting, that eventually they would start going down.”
Starting late in the first quarter and extending into the early fourth quarter, the Patriots countered with a 32-10 run. Miles Demby opened the second quarter with a sequence of a bucket, a block, a swished three and taking a charge all of which helped to knot the game at 14. Giordano’s late second quarter layup gave East its first lead at 20-18.
Berndt scored seven of his game-high 12 points in the third quarter as East built a lead and clamped down defensively. “We take pride in our defense first,” DiRoberto offered. “I think they caught us off guard in the first quarter but we picked it up, took charges, played as a team and condensed it in.”
Giordano’s layup was the high water mark of 37-24 before West came roaring back, getting momentum off of an East technical foul. Engle, who tallied one-third of the Bucks’ points in their first four games and whose 15 paced West on Friday, teamed with Jackson Wisniowski to sink three triples down the stretch.
Giordano and West’s Charlie Cashman both scored eight.
East outscored opponents 122-76 in the first half of its first four games. Six different Patriots had a 14-plus point game in East’s first three contests. “We have so many guys, which is great. I feel like anybody can go get a bucket at any time,” Berndt shared. “Nobody can guard us all on the defensive end so if someone feels like they have a mismatch or something that they can exploit, they’re going to go get a bucket.”
Berndt is the second tallest Patriot yet he brings up the ball, creating mismatches. His uncharacteristic ebullience – baskets were punctuated with fist pumps and smiles – underscored how much the East-West rivalry means.
“With East-West, I don’t know, I had some fun,” Berndt said. “Normally I’m laid back and you won’t hear me talk. All of my teammates and coaches will say that. But I let loose a little bit tonight.”
East entered press time (5-0) after Tuesday’s 61-58 win at CB South, completing a CB sweep in the week. DiRoberto connected on a 3-point play with eight seconds left. Cummiskey (21 points) was three rebounds short of a double-double.
The Bucks (0-5) faced an early gauntlet this season. Their first four opponents won two-thirds of their regular season games last year. On Tuesday, West pulled within one point of North Penn in the third, but the Knights closed the quarter on a 10-0 run in their 65-56 win.
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