caption:


D’Maurian Williams in game last week. Photo by Yan Johnson.


PSA basketball coach Tom Espinosa has said more than once that the argument can be made that winning the conference tournament can be tougher than winning the national championship.
He certainly was right that the Great Atlantic Conference tourney is tough, as PSA suffered its second loss of the season March 7 to Our Savior Lutheran, 105-101, in the title game.
Now we’ll see if the Mustangs can bounce back and have an easier time in the National Prep Championships, which are being played this week at Conn College in New London.
“We just have to regroup in practice, work on the stuff we need to clean up, and get back at it,” said Marty Silvera. “Let’s do that and see what happens. I think it’ll all fall into place for us.
“People have to get over it and put it behind us quick, because we’ve got a chance to win a national championship. Fix what we need to fix and do it right next time we play.”
PSA received a first-day bye in the tournament. Its first game, in the quarterfinals, was played March 11; the semifinals and final are played March 12.
“I don’t know how we regroup,” Espinosa said, “but we have to. It helps that we get that bye the first day. We’ve got a couple of days to prepare for something even bigger.”
Saturday’s was a back-and-forth game as the teams traded runs and occasional leads. PSA led 49-46 at the half, but trailed most of second half, including down seven (97-90) with about five minutes to play. The Mustangs got the deficit down to 103-101 inside the final minute and had two opportunities to tie or take the lead after getting big stops on defense.
But back-to-back turnovers, one an intercepted outlet pass with 40 seconds left, the other after a non-call when Hassan Diarra drove to the basket and took a lot of contact, did PSA in.
“I saw the open lane,” Diarra said, “then I saw the guy step up. I tried to Euro-step around him, and he tripped me a little bit. The ref didn’t call it but you can’t base the game off that.
“We made a lot of mistakes throughout the game…a lot of turnovers, we didn’t rebound the ball well. We’ve got some things we need to fix before the national tournament.”
St-John’s-commit Posh Alexander, who had 42 points, 15 assists, five rebounds, and two steals, made a pair of free throws with two seconds to play and seal the win for OSL.
Rebounding was the overwhelming difference in the game. While there was no official count, OSL dominated the offensive glass and scored countless times off its own misses.
“They just killed us with second-and third-chance opportunities,” Espinosa said. “You can’t just give them two, three, four, sometimes more chances. I’ll take some of the blame on that. Next year, we’re going to do box-out drills every day.
“We’re supposed to be one of the best prep teams in the country and we couldn’t rebound. We can’t do that (this) week and expect to win.”
Diarra finished the game with 33 points and became PSA’s all-time leading scorer in the process.
“It’s cool, man,” said the Texas A&M-bound Diarra. “It’s amazing. I would have rather win the game though, so it’s bittersweet.”
Mekhi Gray provided a huge scoring lift for the Mustangs (34-4), knocking down five 3-pointers and finishing with a season-high 21 points. The Mustangs needed another scorer to emerge, as both Vlad Goldin and Johnnie Williams have been limited by injuries; Williams dressed for the GAC final but did not play.
“The past few games, I’ve been shooting real confidently,” he said. “I got some shots up early when we got here and I told Johnnie that when I got the ball, I’m going to shoot because my shot feels so good right now.”
D’Maurian Williams added 19 points for PSA.
PSA advanced to the final by making light work of Thetford in the semifinals. Diarra had 19 points, Josh Gray finished with 12 points, 15 rebounds and seven blocks. Melvyn Ebonkoli added seven points and 10 rebounds, while Marty Silvera had seven points, six assists, and four steals in the Mustangs’ 86-43 win.
PSA also won its regular-season finale on March 3, topping Masters. 75-64. Mekhi Gray scored 16 points, D’Maurian Williams 14, and Diarra 12. Elijah Hutchins-Everett finished with 11 points and six rebounds, and Josh Gray added nine points and 11 rebounds.
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy

..

Virus prevention
Hand
washing
is handy
The single most important piece of advice health experts can give to help us stay safe from COVID-19 is this one: Wash your hands.
According to WebMD:
“In the final analysis, it’s the hands. The hands are the connecting piece,” says Elizabeth Scott, PhD. Scott co-directs the Center for Hygiene and Health in Home and Community at Simmons University in Boston.
“You can’t necessarily control what you touch. You can’t control who else touched it. But you can look after your own hands,” she says.
Hand-washing works on two fronts: “The first thing that’s happening is that you’re physically removing things from your hands. At the same time, for certain agents, the soap will actually be busting open that agent, breaking it apart.”
How to Wash Your Hands
Scrub away! There’s a correct way to wash your hands and get rid of germs.
Coronaviruses, like this year’s version that has left 100,000 worldwide infected with COVID-19, are encased in a lipid envelope — basically, a layer of fat. Soap can break that fat apart and make the virus unable to infect you.
The second thing soap does is mechanical. It makes skin slippery so that with enough rubbing, we can pry germs off and rinse them away.
Sounds pretty simple, but the vast majority of people still don’t do it right.
A 2013 study had trained observers discreetly watch more than 3,700 people wash their hands. It found that only about 5% of them followed all the rules. About one in four people just wet their hands without using soap. About one in 10 didn’t wash at all after a trip to the restroom. The most common shortcoming for most people was time. Only 5% spent more than 15 seconds washing, rubbing, and rinsing their hands.
That’s not good enough if you’re trying to keep from getting sick.
Step 1:
Turn on the water. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold.
“We’ve done research on water temperature, and what we’ve discovered is that water temperature doesn’t really matter in terms of effectiveness,” says Donald Schaffner, PhD, who studies predictive food microbiology, hand-washing, and cross-contamination at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
Step 2:
Second, lather up. The soap helps germs slip off your skin as you rub your hands together.
Pick a liquid or gel over foaming pump soap. A 2017 study that compared liquid and foam soaps from the same brand found that washing with foam didn’t significantly reduce bacteria on the hands of people who were in the study, while washing with a liquid soap did. “People tend to wash their hands for a shorter duration with the foam soap,” says Ozlem Equils, MD, president of an educational nonprofit called MiOra.
Bacteria can stay on bar soap that stays wet because it gets used frequently. But studies that have looked to see whether that’s a problem show that the bacteria don’t seem to transfer to the next user. If your bar looks slimy, rinse it off under water before you lather your hands, and try to store it so it will dry out between uses.
Step 3:
How long? At least 20 seconds, according to the CDC. As you’ve probably heard, that’s the same amount of time it takes to sing “Happy Birthday to You” twice.

Step 4:
Drying. Experts say paper towels actually have a beneficial effect beyond simply washing. Rubbing your hands with a paper towel removes even more germs than just washing alone. Dry hands are also less likely to spread contamination than wet hands.

If you’re in a public bathroom, and there’s no soap, just rubbing your hands together under the water does do some good. A 2011 study from researchers at the London School of Tropical Hygiene found that washing with water alone reduced bacteria on hands to about one-quarter of their prewash state. Washing with soap and water brought bacterial counts down to about 8% of where they were before washing.

“Typically, spots people will miss will be the back of the hands, lower palm, around the fingernails and the nail bed area,” according to experts.

How often do you need to wash? A lot. The CDC says to wash your hands: Before, during, and after food prep; before eating; before and after tending to someone who’s sick; before and after treating a cut or other wound; after going to the bathroom; after changing diapers or helping a child in the bathroom; after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing; after touching an animal, or touching pet food or pet waste’ after handling pet food or pet treats; after touching garbage.
If you can’t wash, reach for some hand sanitizer. Lipid membrane viruses like coronaviruses are killed by alcohol-based hand sanitizer, experts say. Just make sure it’s at least 62% alcohol.
Make sure to use enough so that it covers all the surfaces on your hands. Rub that on until your hands feel dry, which should take about 20 seconds.
If you still have some skin left on your hands after all that washing, try to keep it clean. Avoid touching contaminated surfaces. Use a clean paper towel to open bathroom doors. Disinfect dirty surfaces that you use every day, like the touchscreen on your phone and your computer keyboard.

..
 

It was the little things that got the Woodstock Academy Gold prep basketball team March 8.
“I think it was our own errors. Death by a thousand paper cuts,” said Woodstock Academy coach Jacque Rivera. “We never made the biggest mistake but they all multiplied.”
As a result, the Centaurs Gold Prep basketball team lost for a third time this season to Springfield Commonwealth Academy Blue, 97-79, in the Power 5 Conference AAA tournament championship game.
The Gold prep basketball team’s season isn’t over, however.
The Centaurs (28-7) play in the National Prep Championship this week at Connecticut College in New London.
Woodstock Academy played in a first-round game at 11 a.m. on Tuesday against DME Academy and, with a win, took on Scotland Campus at 6 p.m. also on Tuesday (the results were too late for this edition) for the right to go into the quarterfinal round on Wednesday.
“Any road traveled in the athletic world is a tough one,” Rivera said.
To win a national title, however, the Centaurs have a lot of work to do, namely, something no team has ever done in the prep tournament.
“Someone will do it someday. Somebody will win five games in three days (in the National Prep championship tournament), somebody will do it. Why not us?,” Rivera said.
The Centaurs will have to play a little better than they did against SCA Blue. The game was back-and-forth through the first 10 minutes of the first half.
But Springfield Commonwealth put together a 10-point run to go up by 11, 27-16, with 8:41 left in the half.
Dyondre Dominguez (18 points) and Quran McPherson (14) broke that string with a pair of 3-pointers.
Unfortunately, that was the exception more than the rule for the Centaurs who made only 10-of-34 from beyond the arc.
Rivera attributed that to not playing together. The offensive rebounds were a large problem, according to Ronnie DeGray.
The Centaurs trailed by 10 at the half, 48-38, but closed that gap early in the second half.
DeGray scored the first three points of the second half and Dominguez had a three-point play of his own to cut the deficit to six, 52-46, just 3:15 into the half.
But Springfield Commonwealth answered with the next six points to re-establish the double-digit lead.
The Centaurs again cut it to seven when DeGray, who finished with a game-high 29 points, hit a 3-pointer to make it 60-53 with 12:20 left.
 “Ronnie played well with his 29 points, 8 rebounds and 5 steals. I thought he competed on the backboard and made shots,” Rivera said.
SCA answered with a 10-2 run to go up, 70-55, with 9:55 to play and they never led by less than double digits the remainder of the way.
The Centaurs made the championship game with a 95-63 win over Redemption Christian Academy in a Power 5 Conference semifinal March 7.
Four players scored in double figures for the Centaurs led by Dominguez with 16 points. DeGray added 15 points, McPherson had 14 and Quinton McElroy 10 in the win.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy

..