Raiders Dominate Gorton in Overtime at Scarsdale on 1-27

The Raiders Varsity Basketball team broke their losing streak with a hard-fought win against Gorton High School of Yonkers at SHS on Friday January 27th. The Raiders beat Gorton soundly earlier in the season and did not expect to have to fight so hard to come out on top at this second challenge. When they first played Gorton, the Yonkers players had not found an identity. Now, with more experience, they run an offense through Junior Point Guard Dane Williamson. This strategy was successful for Gorton, who most recently lost two close games in overtime against Scarsdale and Mamaroneck.

Though Gorton arrived with just eight players, they were tough and managed to best the Raiders in the first quarter which ended at 8-18 for Gorton. The tables seemed to turn at the beginning of the second quarter when Jon Miller scored a three-pointer. Coach John Feld subbed in Brad Fieldler, Dylan LoBue, Jon Cohen and Peter Simon. Both Simon and Cohen scored and Cohen sunk two foul shots, leaving the score at 22-25 at the buzzer.

Determined to win, Coach Feld brought back the starting lineup for the third quarter. Again, Miller scored quickly and tied up the score at 30-30 with the clock at 5:52. Aleks Larsen was fouled, missed the two foul shots but scored immediately afterwards keeping the score tied at 33-33. However, shortly thereafter Larsen was charged with his fifth personal and fouled out of the game. Near the end of the third quarter Plummer made another acrobatic move grabbing the ball at one end of the court, and making a run for the opposite side bringing the score to 38-35.

Gorton called a timeout and when they returned to the court they slowed down the game, and scored again leaving the count at 38 to 40.

The game remained neck in neck in the fourth quarter with the Raiders unable to pull ahead before the clock ran out. With two minutes left and the score tied at 42, the Raiders and Gorton ran out the clock with both calling for repeated timeouts.

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Tied at 42-42 at the end of regulation time, the game went into a four-minute overtime and the Raiders pulled it together and shot ahead. Plummer scored first, moving the scoreboard to 44-42, followed by Hewitt bringing it to 46-42. With just two minutes remaining, Yonkers got desperate and continually fouled the Scarsdale players who used their foul shots to raise the score. Plummer, Scacchi, Cohen and Squadron were all fouled in the final minutes of the game and used these opportunities to score 7 points and raise the score to a final tally of 55-44.

The eleven-point spread was a sweet victory after the neck-in-neck game. High scorers for the game were Greg Scacchi with 14 points, and Jon Cohen and Jon Miller at 9 each. Gorton’s Dane Williamson was his team’s leading scorer with 22 points.

The Raiders are away next week. On Tuesday they’ll meet their biggest rivals at Mamaroneck at 4:15 and on Saturday 2/4 they’ll play Portchester at Scarsdale for Breast Cancer Awareness Day at 6 pm. Their second to last game will be the following Tuesday, 2/7, against Mt. Vernon and they will close out the regular season on Friday 2/10 against Mamaroneck at Scarsdale.

Photo credit: Cathy Hewitt