The Knights defeated Springfield Technical Community College on the first round quarterfinals of Region 21 tournament 84 to 56 and move on to the semi-finals.
The Knights were back in the playoff for the first time in four years as they faced Springfield, who the Knights defeated 75-58 earlier this month.
On Feb 19. to finish the regular season the Knights played poorly but on Feb. 23 it was a completely different team, more the team that we know in the second half of the season. “I think you will see a better performance from the boys tonight we had an excellent two days of practice the boys are really focused in I think we really excited to get in rolling understanding the magnitude of tournament play that is win or go home so the boys are really focused at practice and I expect a good effort tonight,” Stratton said.
The key of the game was defense in order to move on to the semifinals “I think the key is to play well defensively. When we playing well defensively we are as good as anybody in the country. When we playing very poorly we have difficult beating a JV basketball team… I expect a big performance from us defensively… Springfield Tech has pretty two good excellent basketball player Barbosa and Ortiz which I think Cristian Kinsley is going to draw Ortiz early on Daniel is going to draw Barbosa early on I expect a good effort from them if we can take those 2 basketball player away…” Stratton said.
Stratton said the playoff atmosphere really makes a difference.
“… I think it’s going to be another battle another hard fought battle tonight that hopefully we can continue victories and continue the basketball season,” Stratton said.
The Knights won tip off against Springfield Tech. The Knights started the game aggressive and were on a 16-2 run in a span of 5 minutes and 11 seconds before Cunningham draw a fouls “Cunningham is a valuable part of our program he just been on foul problem lately so his been a valuable part for us and we need Phillip to stay off foul trouble if we going to have any success to move forward,” Stratton said.
The Knights had a 20 point lead they were up 29-9 with just seven minutes left in the first period.
“We had a good game plan going in. We were taking away Ortiz. He has been a killer he is one of the top 5 scoring leaders in the Region. We felt if we took him away the rest of the team will follow which we were pretty successful in doing Cristian Kinsley, Matt D’Amato, Elijaa Hass, Greg Duran those four guys that covered him did an excellent job. He really couldn’t get into his rhythm we held him to a season low seven points at half time and I thought in a couple of those that were contested shot and made really good shots,” Stratton said.
The Knights were up 38-19 at half. The Knights had 5 fouls in the first half and 6 in the second half. That’s the Knights season low allowed against the other opponents throughout the season scoring 19 points at the half.
The start of the second period they were a five-minute delay the shot clock was not working that they had to turn the lights back off and back on.When the delay was over the Knights went back to business, they still had something on the tank.
The Knights they were on 12-3 run to begin the period “I thought we came out of the half, we didn’t want Springfield Tech to gain any life we only made couple adjustments at half time that we executed right away coming out of the half we brought our big to run the lane straight down the court… and as you saw Kevin got a wide open lay up pass from pass from Daniel then we hit Metin couple possession later same type of run that we came out of the second half with so we were happy with the adjustment that we had,” Stratton said.
Ezequiel Barning of Brampton, Ontorio “The mentality was to stay focused don’t get to excited because we have a lead the game is not over until it is over keep executing even if you have a good lead keep executing execute execute all the way until the end,” he said.
