The Johnston Panthers went to Cranston High School West on Monday night and pummeled the Falcons 92-73 in front of a packed house during a Boys Division II Basketball showdown.
Johnston was led by junior guards Anthony Corsinetti and Derek Salvatore. Corsinetti finished the contest with 22 points and Salvatore chipped in 17 points.
“Anthony is a leader on this team and he’s our scorer,” Panthers head coach Mike Bedrosian said. “He’s our guy. He gets things going offensively, and when he’s on, he’s tough to stop. And he has a lot of range. More importantly than anything, he’s a leader on this team, and he’s the glue that keeps us going.”
“He and Derek Salvatore, those two guys are our guys,” Bedrosian said. “We run through them two. So, as well as they’re playing, the team’s going to follow suit. And it’s been showing early on in the season.”
Johnston also saw two other players reach double-digits in scoring with Neari Vasquez, a junior forward, recording 12 points, and Brandon Testa, a sophomore guard, adding 11 points.
“The two best practices that we had all year were the days before games,” Bedrosian said. “And these guys buy into the game plan of what we expect.”
“We have an identity that we found earlier this year than we did last year,” Bedrosian explained. “Last year, we didn’t find our identity until about nine or ten games in. This year, we knew our identity from Day 1 and the guys are proving it. We could have scored 120 points tonight if we wanted to.”
West junior forward Jaymien Aponte topped all scorers with 23 points.
“Jaymien is an absolute pleasure to coach,” Falcons head coach James Sweeney said. “He works hard every single day. He is coachable. He does everything he’s supposed to do, and to me, he leads by example almost better than anyone else in our program, on how to approach every single day’s practice and games. And he’s a hell of a player. He’s getting better and better and better, and he’s given us chances to win, and he’s a major part of this team. I love coaching him and we need him. So, he’s been phenomenal this year, and I know he’s going to have a breakout junior season, and I just love to root for that kid.”
Adreyann Perez, a junior guard, added nine points for West, while Anthony Veltri, a senior guard, and Ryan Zarrella, a junior guard, rounded out the Falcons scoring with eight points and seven points, respectively.
The game began with Johnston’s Salvatore and West’s Nick Masse trading buckets, but the Panthers assumed complete control after that.
Vasquez made a layup, following a feed from Salvatore, and that put the Panthers on top 4-2.
Next, Corsinetti made a pair of free throws and extended the Johnston advantage to four.
Soon after, Corsinetti buried back-to-back treys from the top of the arc, before Salvatore added a 3-ball, and then a put back, and increased the Johnston cushion to 19-4.
The Panthers continued to pad their lead in the second quarter.
Corsinetti started the frame with a four-point play where he made a 3-point shot while he was fouled, and then added a free throw, which extended the Johnston buffer to 25-6.
Johnston ballooned its lead to 41-15 with under three minutes to play in the first half when Vasquez sank a 3-pointer.
The Panthers closed the third quarter with an 11-2 run and held its largest lead of the game at 74-37, briefly, before bringing a 35-point lead into the final frame.
West went on a 6-0 run midway through the fourth frame, featuring a put back from Aponte, a running bank-shot from Alex Ceseretti, and a layup from Hudson Carvalho, which inched the Falcons within 79-46.
Perez scored back-to-back buckets for West with 1:21 remaining in the contest and that cut the Falcons deficit to 87-67.
Then, with 23.8 seconds on the clock, Aponte scored an old-fashioned 3-point play and got West within 92-73, and that’s how it ended.
Johnston sat at 3-0 in the league after Monday night’s win. The Panthers played again on Wednesday at home versus Hope, but the score was unavailable at press time.
West fell to 1-2 in the league with the Monday night defeat.
“Obviously, it’s disappointing when it comes to results,” Sweeney said. “Any time you play at home in front of a packed crowd, you want to give everything you can for a chance to win, and you want to put a good product out on the court.”
“But we’re really focused on just being better every day,” Sweeney said. “Learning from our mistakes, learning from what we didn’t do tonight. We have good senior leadership. We have good camaraderie with our players, and I know we’re going to come back to practice tomorrow and give it everything we have. And it hurts to lose. It’s not fun. Especially, in your home gym. But the reality is, it’s one loss and we’ve got a big game Wednesday at Mt. Hope and we’ve got to move forward.”
The result for Wednesday’s game was unavailable at press time.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here