STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — McKee\/Staten Island Tech and St. Joseph Hill each cruised to opening-round wins at the third-annual Borough President\u2019s Cup Friday evening at Moore Catholic HS, Graniteville.<\/p>\n
The Seagulls, the PSAL five-seed, dumped PSAL No. 8 Port Richmond 31-11 in the opener of the four-game card to advance to second-round play, while Hill (CHSAA No. 4) got past Susan Wagner (PSAL 3) 74-51 to earn a berth into Tuesday\u2019s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Head coach Pete Lamarca\u2019s young ladies get a date with Curtis (PSAL # 2) Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m., at the CYO-MIV; while Hill will meet the winner of Saturday\u2019s (5 p.m.) St. Joseph by-the-Sea-Petrides matchup.<\/p>\n
Hill 74, Wagner 51<\/p>\n
Hill executed its game plan from the opening tip, built a sizeable lead with hot shooting from downtown and coasted to victory.<\/p>\n
The two teams were originally supposed to meet in Sunday\u2019s second round, but predicted snow storm on that day forced the tourney directors to move the second round up a day to Saturday. But when SW realized it was already playing a PSAL game on Saturday, the Falcons asked if they could move the game to Friday and Hill agreed. <\/p>\n
Part of the Arrochar school\u2019s pre-game strategy was limiting touches to high-scoring Falcon Casey McKinney (25 ppg.) and whenever the senior was on the floor the winners defense did just that in holding the powerful McKinney to just five points over the the game\u2019s first two periods. <\/p>\n
The issue for the Falcons was keeping McKinney on the floor. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Tom Rizzo\u2019s club his senior star saw more time on the pine than the court due to foul trouble and that ultimately doomed the Sea View school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played against Casey (and Wagner) last year in the first round when we had some powerful seniors on our team, so we knew what she was capable of doing,\u201d said Hill coach Ashley Vogel. \u201cShe\u2019s a very talented player and a great kid who works hard, but our goal was just to wall up on her and make her work for everything and we did that. She got into foul trouble and we were able to take advantage of it, but we prepared for her being on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vogel\u2019s young troops also prepared to shoot the ball – specifically from beyond the arc – and they did just that to start the game.<\/p>\n
The Hilltoppers bolted out to early leads of 10-0, 14-3 and got their bulge up to 15 at 20-5 keyed by their outside efficiency.<\/p>\n
Senior swingman Ella Onesto (game-high 21 points) was particularly hot from deep as she connected on four first period triples to spark Hill. Mackenzie Schaming (nine points) also drained a three in the onslaught.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always have a tough time playing here at Moore, so we worked a lot in practice on our shot and it showed early,\u201d explained Vogel. \u201cElla got off to a hot start and Mackenzie has been playing well all year so I knew when our shots started going down it was a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill led 25-12 after one and built the advantage to 36-21 at the intermission as the Falcons struggled to find their footing with their leading scorer in foul trouble. <\/p>\n
SW began the second-half with a mini 5-0 run to get the lead down to 10, but behind the play of junior Brielle Longo, Hill was able to keep the Falcons at a safe distance throughout.<\/p>\n
Longo, a fiesty guard, tallied 10 of her 16 points in the second-half as Vogel emptied her bench and got points from 10 different players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to refer to Brielle as an untamed horse,\u201d laughed the second-year mentor. \u201cShe can go coast-to-coast, she\u2019s super quick, super fast and brings a lot of energy to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
MSIT 31, Port Richmond 11<\/p>\n
Madeline Chen netted a game-high 15 for the Gulls who led from start to finish. Thalia Treasure chipped in with nine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — McKee\/Staten Island Tech and St. Joseph Hill each cruised to opening-round wins at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-110676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}