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The season opener for the Woodstock Academy Gold prep basketball featured some numbers that may cause concern for some coaches.
The Centaurs shot 38 percent from the floor, just 17 percent from 3-point land and 57 percent from the free throw line.
Coach Jacque Rivera was not worried. After all, his team posted a 68-53 win over Thetford Prep in the Woodstock Academy Invitational opener Nov. 2 despite those stats.
“In the land of prep school basketball, when you don’t play your best and still come out on top, you just want to keep it moving in the right direction. If you can have those horrific numbers and still have success, that ball will go in. It’s the law of averages. We’re not going to shoot that bad every night,” Rivera said.
New York International Academy was on the receiving end of a much more typical offensive performance by the Gold squad which rolled to a 127-61 victory at the Alumni Fieldhouse.
The Centaurs didn’t miss much against the Eagles and they started with not one, but two 3-pointers.
Off the tip, Woodstock Academy found Michael Jefferson open in the left corner. He buried the 3-pointer.
The Eagles turned the ball over and the Centaurs again found Jefferson in the corner. Same result.
“That was key,” said Centaurs’ teammate Dyondre Dominguez. “We had to start off good (Sunday) after the bad start (on Saturday).”
Josh Davis and Cairo McCroy chimed in with 3-pointers of their own a few minutes later and five consecutive points by Jamon Kemp put the Centaurs up by 16.
The Centaurs just had too many answers offensively for New York International and too much length defensively.
The Eagles had troubles just getting the ball over halfcourt due to their lack of size.
The barrage continued. The Centaurs went up by 27 when McCroy and Kemp hit back-to-back slams. Kemp, who scored 19 of his 21 points in the first half, added two more buckets and Dominguez, who led the Centaurs with 23 points, added a basket off a nifty behind the back pass from McCroy and then drained a 3-pointer.
McCroy also set up Dominguez in the second half with a little kiss off the glass that resulted in a two-handed slam for the 6-8 post from Providence.
By the time that dunk went down, the Centaurs were having a little fun, putting on a show for the fans. The game was essentially over by halftime when Woodstock Academy owned a 65-25 lead.
The win over Thetford Prep took a bit more work. It was only a seven-point lead for the Centaurs with 4:54 to play.
But a 10-0 run spurred by eight points from Quran McPherson, who led the team with 14 points, put the game away. McCroy and Kemp each added 13 points in the win.
Blue Team Splits
With just under 10 seconds left in the game between the Woodstock Academy Blue prep basketball team and Thetford Prep Nov. 3 at the Alumni Fieldhouse, Centaurs’ guard Nahshon Battle got the ball on the left side, just beyond the 3-point arc.
Battle, who finished with a game-high 20 points, let it fly.
“One hundred percent,” Blue coach Denzel Washington said when asked if he thought it was going down. It went down and, unfortunately, came back out.
The Centaurs fell two points short, 45-43, and had to settle for a split in the season-opening Woodstock Academy Invitational tournament over the weekend.
The Centaurs opened with an 87-68 win over New York International Academy Nov. 2. The Blue team started off well against Thetford Prep. Vondre Chase scored the first two points of the game and Trevor Green, after a Thetford turnover, hit a 3-pointer.
Add five more unanswered points by Battle and Woodstock Academy opened a 10-0 lead with 13:23 left in the first half.
That was the end of the good news. The Centaurs scored five more points in the remainder of the first half and never were able to find their stride offensively. Thetford Prep was able to establish the tempo it wanted against the Centaurs.
The Centaurs only other first half points came on a 3-pointer by Chase and a Darryl Mackey bucket.
Thetford Prep led at the break, 20-15.
The Centaurs made only 5-of-32 from the floor and had to endure a pair of five-minute scoring droughts. Still, Woodstock Academy did take the lead back early in the second half on a 3-pointer by Battle.
Thetford retook the lead for good when it went on a 10-2 run midway through the second half. Green finished with eight points in the loss.
The Centaurs received 21 points from Chase and 20 from MacKey off the bench in the win over New York International.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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