Hot shooting and beautiful passing from their senior point guard Max Schneider, helped Williamsville East secure a 76-60 victory over Iroquois.
Coming into Iroquois, Williamsville East head coach RJ Killinger knew the challenge would be there. In the end he was happy to see his players execute the game plan.
“I credit my guys who I thought it was our best half-court offense that we seen all season. It’s tough to get out and run on this court, we like to run our fast break. They made us play half-court offense and I thought we did a great job executing that,” said Killinger.
The Flames were red hot from beyond the arc, making 12 of their buckets from three-point land. Seven of them came from the senior Jake Notaro, who came into the contest averaging 8.4 ppg.
Notaro ended the day with 25 points and 11 rebounds; he displayed an impressive double-double performance and is the fourth player on the team to score more then 20 points in a game.
Schneider, who averaged 26.4 ppg on the season, put up 16 points in the contest. Defensively, Iroquois did very well to contain Schneider from shooting, but it did lead to other players on the Flames to get going. He then used his other great trait which is to find the open man and pass the ball exceptionally well. Schneider finished with 14 assists.
“Max did a great job looking around for us…we just played great defense and we really played all around well as a team,” said Jake Notaro.
Along with Notaro, the ball movement led to Junior Dorian Facen (17 points) and Sophomore Mason Evans (14 points) to get open and make some big shots down the stretch.
The game was a lot closer at the start of the contest, Iroquois’ main shooters Trey Klietz and Nick Mogavero shot the ball well from three-point land, only down by five once the first quarter came to a end. Mogavero finsihed the game leading his team in scoring with 16 points while Kleitz was behind him with 14.
When the second quarter came around Iroquois missed some shot opportunities while Williamsville East kept the pedal down. Notaro would hit two threes, Schneider scored 10 points in the quarter and Facen nailed a three at the buzzer to put his team up double-digits (46-34).
Iroquois got into a groove early in the second half, outscoring their opponents 17-10 and heading to the fourth quarter down by five. However, Notaro buried two more threes while Evans and Macen got in on the long-rang action. 20 fourth-quarter points by Williamsville East was enough to uplift them and now move into second place in ECIC Division 2.
It was a battle that had anticipation and was a great preview of what a possible Class A crossover championship could be. For now Williamsville East won this battle and both teams will play each other again Tuesday Feb. 1 at Williamsville East.
What’s up next for both squads, the Flames will look to get revenge on Amherst next Tuesday at their home court, tip off set for 6:30 p.m. As for Iroquois their at Starpoint next Tuesday for a 7:00 p.m. tip off.
