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Ahmad Jeffries found the range Feb. 24.
The Woodstock Academy Blue prep basketball team guard hit six 3-pointers against the Knox School on Long Island.
The last was the biggest.
His long-range jumper with 40 seconds left lifted the Centaurs to the 81-80 win.
Jeffries finished with 26 in the contest and Ty Mosley added 17 in the win which gave the Blue squad a split of its weekend overnight trip to New York.
The Centaurs (27-8) fell to Upper Room Christian Academy, 83-77, on Saturday night and saw their 10-game win streak come to an end.
Jeff Planutis scored 21 points in the loss while Siddiq Canty added 15.
Earlier in the week, it was a little playground basketball for the Centaurs last Wednesday at the Alumni Fieldhouse.
Clearly the better team, the Centaurs rolled to a 95-55 win over the Springfield Commonwealth Regional team.
“It’s tough to play the way we want to play the whole game even though we can do what we want and score how we want. We just have to stay focused and do what we do,” Planutis said.
The Centaurs scored the first 12 points of the game thanks to Mosley, who celebrated his 19th birthday, with a pair of 3-pointers early and Planutis added a couple of baskets.
Balanced scoring throughout the first half by the Centaurs led to a 44-23 advantage at the break.
“We just wanted to come out and establish that lead quickly and keep that lead the whole game,” Planutis said.
The big lead meant the Centaurs could afford to have a little fun and they took advantage by showing off some of their best dunks.
A windmill by Canty was the highlight but he had another and Planutis added a couple of slams.
“It was a lot of fun to watch, Ty also had a couple. It felt really good,” Planutis said of the dunk fest.
Planutis finished with 14 points and Mosley 12.
Kruno Macner, like Macner does, got hot in the second half from long distance. He put up four 3-pointers in the second half and finished with a team-high 20 points.
Some of the post-grad team members will be leaving shortly after the conclusion of the season, Planutis will not be among them.
“I’m not leaving in March. I won’t be leaving until April or so after I decide where I’m going,” Planutis said. “I’ve liked being here a lot. The first couple of weeks were hard, being away from home, but these past couple of months, time has been flying and we’re all such good friends now.”
If anything, leaving Woodstock Academy might be a little difficult.
It wasn’t quite to the level of the NBA All-Star game on the Sunday before which produced 342 points.
But the Woodstock Academy Blue prep and Rocktop Basketball teams produced more than their share of points on President’s Day Monday at the Alumni Fieldhouse.
The two teams combined for 224 points with the Centaurs walking away with the 123-101victory over their Philadelphia-based opponents.
Canty admitted that he had never played in a game where the two teams combined to score so many points.
In another odd occurrence, the Centaurs were also playing the same team from Rocktop that had just finished playing the Gold prep team.
That meant 80 minutes of basketball in about 2 ½ hours for the opponents.
“That’s really tough,” Canty said. “I was watching them in the stands thinking, ‘Man, it’s going to suck because we both press’. The Gold team is way longer. They could barely dribble the ball up the court and then they play us and we play with more intensity. It was tough for them,” Canty said.
Canty made it even worse early.
The 6-foot-1 guard from Tampa, Fla. hit four 3-pointers in the first 4:03 of the game to help the Centaurs build an early, 16-9, lead.
“It was chippy so I kind of got a little competitive. I just wanted to win,” Canty said.
Canty finished with 27 points and added another 3-pointer in the second half, doing a pretty good impression of his teammate from the Gold squad, T.J. Weeks.
“I was watching T.J. in the first game and he was doing his thing. He even had his (air) guitar out,” Canty said with a laugh.
It did take the Blue team a little longer to shake Rocktop.
Although Rocktop never got the lead, it did tie the game at 33 on a 3-pointer by R.J. Ameri.
Planutis scored eight of his 21 points in the closing minutes of the first half to put the Centaurs up, 59-45.
The Centaurs extended it to 20 when Isaiah Jones (24 points) hit a four free throws in a row, two due to a technical called on the Rocktop bench, to put Woodstock Academy up, 75-55.
The two teams essentially traded buckets from there out with Rocktop’s coming almost exclusively from Ishmael Waldron who finished with a game-high 41 points.
“We had a run of losses, but we came back, started fighting again and got more wins. We’re just waiting on the (Power 5 conference) playoffs right now and we’re going to try and carry this run into the championship,” Canty said.
Marc Allard
Sports Information Director
The Woodstock Academy
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