On to the next round
The ‘enjoyable’ Marauders put it all together in blowout win
By GIB SNYDER III
OBSERVER Sports Reporter
“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” a story published by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 is a fitting analogy for the 2016-17 Dunkirk boys basketball team.
When the Marauders (12-9) are good, they are hard to beat, as evidenced by regular season wins over Class AA Lancaster, two dominating wins over arch-rival Fredonia, a 92-77 win over Chautauqua Lake (17-3) — No. 13 in the latest New York State Sportswriters’ Association Class C poll — and back-to-back 100-point performances against CCAA West 1 opponents Maple Grove (101-57) and Falconer (107-30).
However, losses to teams like Lake Shore (5-15), the same Maple Grove team they beat by 44, coupled with a 14-point loss to an Olean team they nearly beat on the road on Jan. 23, as well as a 69-34 loss to Monsignor Martin powerhouse St. Francis, can make them a frustrating bunch for Jack O’Brien to coach.
Luckily for O’Brien, the Dr. Jekyll version of Dunkirk showed up Wednesday night in its Section VI, Class B-1 prequarterfinal matchup, as the No. 5 Marauders eased past the No. 12 Albion Purple Eagles, 78-39.
“It’s certainly enjoyable,” O’Brien said when asked how much fun it is to coach his team when it plays the way it did Wednesday night. “But you also know that there is another side to it. And when we get going on offense and we get shots to fall, it really gets us going on defense. I wish it was the other way around where we always worked on defense and we got stops and then that helped to spur our offense. But we’ll take it. We proved (Wednesday) that we can play good defense for 32 minutes and that was good to see.”
Dunkirk, backed by Darnell Butts, Evon Hernandez and Shamon Stewart, opened the first quarter on 7-0 run, while Tyreek Buchanan-Ruiz and Devaun Farnham-DeJesus outscored Albion 7-0 to close the first frame to give the Marauders a 17-8 lead it never came close to relinquishing.
“I thought we played four quarters of good basketball,” O’Brien said. “And I thought after seeing Albion (Tuesday) night, and seeing the size that they had, I thought that maybe if some shots weren’t going to be falling, we might question how it was going to go. So it was nice to see us move the ball, attack the rim, get some pressure on them and open (the lead) up early.”
The Marauders carried their 7-0 first-quarter-ending run into the second quarter, as Stewart, Farnham-DeJesus and Hernandez helped to put together another 7-0 spurt that put the home team up 24-8, before a pair of free-throws by Kory Reynolds halted the Purple Eagles’ scoring drought, which was aided by the Marauders’ ability to play a solid full-court press, as well as stingy zone defense.
Another freebie by Tommy Mattison cut the Dunkirk lead to 24-11, before an old-fashioned three-point play by Butts stole back what little momentum Albion thought it had snatched away from Dunkirk. And from there, the Marauders outscored the visitors, 17-4, over the final 4:10 of the second quarter to take a 41-15 lead into the break.
“Obviously it has been up and down all year and there have been a lot of inconsistencies,” O’Brien said. “And some of that is with personnel, because we haven’t had guys for certain games and the dynamic of the team seemed to be ever-changing. We’ve had to keep figuring out who we could go to, what guys strengths are and who plays well together.”
Stewart led all scorers in the first half with 11 points, Butts chipped in nine, and Farnham-DeJesus and Hernandez had six points each in a dominating first two quarters for the Marauders.
The second half did not go much better for the Purple Eagles, as the Marauders outscored them 16-6 over the first 4:11 of the third quarter, before a 7-4 finish by Albion sent the game into the final eight minutes with Dunkirk ahead by a commanding 61-28.
Farnham-DeJesus, who has been on the varsity team since he was a freshman, scored seven of his 15 points in the third.
“We are so confident in his abilities,” O’Brien said of Farnham-DeJesus. “And we want him to be aggressive. And he’s long and he’s smooth and he can do so many things, but we need him to put the pedal to the metal and go and not wait and try and see what is going to happen. We need him to attack the rim with a fury and get fouled and get to the line. And he’s great at doing all those things offensively and when’s he’s doing that, he’s really tough to stop.”
Hernandez, the senior quarterback who helped lead Dunkirk to its first-ever Section VI and Far West Regional football titles this past fall, went on a tear in the fourth quarter, scoring seven of his team’s first nine points and 11 of his game-high 18 throughout the game’s final eight minutes.
Besides Hernandez and Farnham-DeJesus scoring in double-digits, Butts finished with 12 points while Stewart, like he does nearly every night he takes the floor for the Marauders, finished with likely the most productive all-around game, as he had 13 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists and four blocks.
“I think that’s something that we’ve been fairly consistent with,” O’Brien said of his team having more than one player finish in double-figures in points. “While we’ve been consistently inconsistent, we’ve been able to spread the scoring around. It’s definitely not that there’s one guy that we can go to.
For the Purple Eagles, Reynolds had a team-high 13 points while Mattison chipped in 11.
Up next for Dunkirk is a trip Friday night to Springville, where it will take on the No. 4 Griffins, who earned a bye into the quarterfinals.
“Not a ton,” O’Brien said when asked what he knew about Springville. “We’ve got some scouting going on and we’re talking to some people. We weren’t able to get out to any of their games this year, but we’ll have a decent idea of what they’re going to do. And I don’t think it always comes down to who are we going to go up against. I think it comes down to how are we going to play and how do we play.
“It’s now who you play, but how you play,” O’Brien added. “And if we come out and we want to get stops on defense and we want to limit teams to one shot and we want to come down and attack the basket, or be patient and wait for good shots, we’re going to be fine no matter the opponent. I think we can hang with anybody talent-wise in our section and we’d love it if we can continue to get this type of performance and this type of effort, because we know any team we face is going to get our best shot.”