Ellwood comes up short against Vincentian
Ellwood City (51) Vs. Vincentian (65)
Dec 10, 2011
Special to The News

The Ellwood City Lincoln boys basketball team played a good half on offense and a good half on defense last night.

Too bad the Wolverines didn’t put the two halves together.

Ellwood City dropped a 65-51 decision to talented Vincentian Academy in the second game of the fourth annual Wolverines Hoops Shootout. Coach Al Campman said he was “OK pleased” with the way his team performed in its season opener at home.

He said that because the Royals are a tough team to go against at any time, let alone in the first game.

“We didn’t play any scrubs. That’s not a scrub team,” Campman said of Vincentian. “There are no plays you can run (against them). Xs and Os are out because of how they play. It’s hard to practice for a team like them.”

Vincentian likes to play at a frantic pace. The Royals use full-court pressure on defense, run at every opportunity and hope to get stretches when they will score eight or 10 consecutive points.

Ellwood City likes to play up-tempo as well, but for the Wolverines to be successful, they have to shoot the basketball well. That’s something they didn’t do in the first half, even though they had plenty of good looks at the basket.

“We played much better defense in the first half against them but we didn’t shoot it well,” Campman said. “We were better on offense the second half, but didn’t play as well defensively. If we shoot it well the first half, we’re right there.”

Ellwood City connected on just 8 of 29 field-goal attempts (27.6 percent) the first half and made just one of 12 3-point attempts. Vincentian wasn’t a whole lot better, making just 30.6 percent of its shots. But the Royals held a 28-19 advantage at the intermission thanks to two free throws by Ryan Wise with 24.3 seconds left in the half and a 3-pointer by Tony DiNardo with two seconds left.

The start of the third quarter did in the Wolverines. Vincentian went on an 11-2 run in the first 3 minutes of the second half to take a 39-21 lead.

DiNardo made a pair of 3s to key the outburst and Chris Koryak, who scored 14 of his game-high 25 points in the quarter, put in a layup and then converted a three-point play.

“We just had about a two-minute stretch where we broke down on defense,” Campman said. “And we aren’t that good to overcome stretches like that.”

“I thought we played the game at our pace and when we’re on our pace we’re pretty good,” Vincentian coach George Yokitis said. “We play for our spurts and we got one of those early in the second half.”

Ellwood City wasn’t about to go away, however. Four times the Wolverines pulled to within 10 points of the Royals in the final four minutes of the third quarter. The last time in the game the Wolverines were that close was after Jared Vetica banged in a 3-pointer with 5:47 left to play.

That’s when Vincentian began to slow the pace. The Royals scored five consecutive points with Koryak driving for a layup with 3:15 remaining to up the lead to 60-45.

“We haven’t worked much on our delay game, but I thought the guys did a pretty good job or running it because we got some easy baskets,” Yokitis said. “We like coming down here. We know we’re going to play Ellwood and that we’re going to have to play hard.”

DiNardo, who made four 3-pointers, finished with 15 points for the Royals.

Mario Greco scored 16 points for Ellwood City and Vetica had 10. The Wolverines will take on Sharpsville at 3 p.m. today in the shootout.

“We hope to take another step forward tomorrow. That’s what we’ll try to do,” Campman said.
Nightly Roundup
Game Scoreboard
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 OT SCORE
Ellwood City 9 10 19 13 0 51
Vincentian 15 13 22 15 0 65
Box Scores
ELLWOOD CITY (51)
Mario Greco 7 2-2 16
Matt Germanoski 1 0-0 3
Matt Morella 3 0-1 6
Jared Vetica 4 0-0 10
Brandon Lucarelli 2 0-0 6
Nick Valentino 0 0-0 0
Matt Young 1 2-3 4
Justin Vetica 2 2-3 6
Anthony Joseph 0 0-0 0
Totals: 20 6-9 51
VINCENTIAN ACADEMY (65)
Chris Koryak 10 4-7 25
Paul Verandi 2 1-6 5
Ryan Wise 2 2-4 6
Tony DiNardo 5 1-2 15
Jim Kenna 2 0-0 5
Matt Rathz 2 0-0 5
Ryan Wolf 2 0-0 4
Jay Cortese 0 0-0 0
Ryan McCann 0 0-0 0
Totals: 25 8-19 65

ELLWOOD CITY 9 10 19 13 — 51
VINCENTIAN ACA. 15 13 22 15 — 65

3-point goals — Vincentian 7 (DiNardo 4, Koryak 1, Kenna 1, Rathz 1); Ellwood City 5 (Lucarelli 2, Jared Vetica 2, Germanoski 1).
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