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Call it a good day for Dyondre Dominguez.
The Woodstock Academy Gold prep basketball player decided early Feb. 29 to commit to play Division I basketball for the University of Massachusetts next year.
He then went out on to the court, scored 25 points, and led the Centaurs to a 94-80 win over Dohn Prep.
“He’s been out with an injury for the past couple of weeks and not having his shooting definitely set us back a little bit. He committed and wanted to go right into the game. He was playing with a free mind. It’s a load off your shoulders when you commit. You work so hard for something and then you get it, and then you go play a basketball game, whatever happens, happens,” said Woodstock Academy Gold coach Jacque Rivera.
The win ended the regular season for the Gold team. They finished with a 27-6 overall record.
“I think any time you have more wins than losses, it’s a good year,” Rivera said. “There is a couple we wish we could get back and when I say a couple, I mean all six. We kind of dropped a few early, went on a run, dropped a couple more. Overall, pretty happy with Year 1.”
Dohn Prep, out of Cincinnati, was a pretty athletic group.
The Centaurs led by 10 at the half and held a double-digit lead throughout the second half occasionally running it to above 20 points only to see Dohn make a run of its own to get it back to the teens.
In addition to Dominguez, Ronnie DeGray finished with 22 points for the Centaurs and Cairo McCrory added 16 including a pretty impressive dunk that caused some jaws in the crowd to drop.
DeGray has been on a tear. DeGray was the key in two wins earlier in the week.
The 6-foot, 7-inch power forward from Parker, Colo., delivered a pair of double-doubles to power the Centaurs to wins.
He finished with a 25-point, 12-rebound effort to make a long bus ride worth it as the Gold prep team scored a 98-78 win over Upper Room Christian Feb. 27.
Earlier in the week, DeGray had a monster game, 36 points and 12 rebounds, in a 71-66 win over Worcester Academy.
The Gold team is next in action March 7 when it hosts Redemption Christian Academy in a Power 5 Conference semifinal at the Fieldhouse.
The Power 5 Conference championship games will be played on Sunday at the Springfield (Mass.) Community Center.
“This is an opportunity to get healthy. There is a small physical break, now it’s the mental piece that we have to redirect and refocus. Some people call it the 0-0 season, I don’t believe in that. We have done some great things this year and we would not have got here without the right mindset. We need to do some of the things that we have been doing, but we also need to fine tune and sharpen up the details,” Rivera said.
Following the Power 5 Conference tournament, the Centaurs Gold team is confident that they will be asked to participate in the National Prep Championship which is held annually at Connecticut College in New London.
“I think we will definitely get an invite. When you look across the board, there is a lot of parity for the National Championship. I think over the last three years, we have become the UConn women; beating us is everyone else’s championship and we have six losses and people act like it’s 15. There are a lot of teams in the National Championship who will have more losses than us. I’m confident in our body of work, confident in our kids, and confident if we get into the tournament, that we will make a run at it,” Rivera said.
Blue Wins
It doesn’t happen often. The Woodstock Academy Centaurs Blue prep basketball team had eight players score in double figures Feb. 29 and posted a 125-51 win over Capital Prep Harbor.
“It was beautiful,” Woodstock Academy coach Denzel Washington said with a laugh about the balanced scoring. “Everyone was happy about it.”
The win ended the regular season for the Centaurs who finished with a 20-16 record.
“Any time you can have 20 wins in a season and you can look back and realize there have been few games, maybe five or six games, where 100 percent of the team has been available, you can understand the fluctuations,” Washington said. “We were always looking for the next option. The team just rolled with the punches. Sometimes, it wasn’t on the winning side, but, we all grew together.”
Washington had reason for concern. The Centaurs had beaten the Harbor Sharks, 107-44, earlier in the season.
He was worried that his team might not be locked in and focused.
The Centaurs jumped out early, scoring 69 first half points, to own a 44-point first-half lead.
Amani Gottlieb did much of the first half damage as he scored all 13 of his points in the opening stanza. Elijah Blackman added 11 of his team-high 18 in the first half. Vondre Chase, Nahshon Battle and Darryl MacKey all added 15 points apiece.
MacKey also accomplished something rare as he added 13 rebounds and 10 assists to finish with a triple-double. Malikai Delgado, Paul Hosey and Walter DeFreitas all scored 14.
The Centaurs also finished with 40 assists in the game.
The Blue squad needed the win. It had come off two losses on the road.
Woodstock Academy fell to the Hyde School of Maine up north early last week, 99-84, despite a double-double effort by Hosey (25 points and 11 rebounds).
The Centaurs then had to travel to Long Island, N.Y., and lost to Upper Room Christian, 74-58, Feb. 27.
Washington said he and the team used the second half of Saturday’s win over Capital Prep Harbor to prepare for the final adventure of the season; the Power 5 Conference tournament.
The Centaurs Blue team will host Hoosac School in a quarterfinal game at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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