By SPENCER BATES
ALLEGANY — It had been a while since Otto-Eldred boys basketball head coach Rob Wight had seen as impactful a performance as Jack Sherry had for his Terrors.
In his team’s second and final game of the 50th Annual Joe DeCerbo Holiday Showcase, Sherry was a man on fire, recording a double-double of 31 points and 15 rebounds in a 55-43 victory over Portville.
After consecutive 3-pointers from the Panthers that opened the contest, Sherry spurred on a 24-0 run — 13 points of which belonged to him.
In O-E’s first game of the showcase, Sherry was resigned to sitting on the bench for most of the first half due to some early foul trouble. Against Portville, he showed why having him on the floor is so critical.
“I’ve been around high school basketball for a long time, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone dominate like that on both ends,” Wight said of Sherry. “He’s a great kid too. When I first took the job (here), he was one of the first kids to introduce himself, and he’s been positive, uplifting, and a leader even though he’s new to the program coming from Smethport. When he can dictate a game like that, it makes everyone’s job a little bit easier.”
The Terrors took a 19-point lead into the break and led by as many as 22 in the first half. For the Panthers, it was a half to forget. According to head coach Dylan Burton, his side was just simply playing without confidence. Passes were picked off, set plays were blown up, and on defense they could not stop the train barreling down the tracks at them.
“A lot of (our players) who don’t see a lot of production offensively, lose confidence,” Burton said. “We’ve been reminding them over and over to play confident, whether it’s the wrong decision or not, still you do it confidently. If you set a screen confidently, I can be happy as a coach. If you’re not sure about it and you set a halfway screen, we don’t get the looks we need to. So it’s really about reminding those other guys to just play with confidence.”
Fortunately for him, he got a response in the second half.
Portville’s talisman Aidan DeFazio found a vein of success which led to him scoring a team-high 21 points, and with the help of his right hand man Peyton Carter, who netted 14 points, they far from allowed O-E to coast over the finish line.
“I thought our response in the third quarter was very good,” Burton said. “We’ve been talking a lot since the beginning of the year about dealing with adversity, and watching (O-E) go on that huge run, that’s a moment of adversity. You need to choose, as an athlete, are you going to roll over and let them keep going, or are you going to grab yourself by the bootstraps and pick yourself up and get ready to go? I thought in the third quarter we came out very well with that.”
Otto-Eldred’s Michael Sheeler (4) looks to pull up from 3 while being closed down by Portville’s Aidan DeFazio (21). Sheeler scored three points for the Terrors in the win while DeFazio netted a team-high 21 points for the Panthers. (Hunter O. Lyle)
The Panthers showed some positive flashes out of the break, but for as much as it pulled itself back into the contest, a lack of consistency on the side of the Terrors contributed heavily to their lead evaporating.
That has been the big key for Wight so far this season. He knows basketball is a game of runs and that mistakes are inevitable, but what he doesn’t want to see is his team falter due to them getting overly comfortable.
“In the first half, we were locked, we were loaded, we were ready to play the game,” Wight said. “The second half we came out, we’re young, we’re inexperienced and not a lot of our guys have played in games where they’re up like that. It’s about learning to keep your foot on the gas and how to have the right mentality in games like that.”
Sherry’s scoring frenzy took a hiatus in the third quarter but it started right back up in the fourth as he powered the result over the line.
The Terrors finished the DeCerbo Showcase 2-0 while the Panthers suffered losses in each of their two games.
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AT ALLEGANY
Portville (43)
DeFazio 7 3-3 21, Carter 5 0-0 14, Camp 1 0-0 2, Truman 1 0-0 2, Hitchcock 1 0-0 2, Torrey 1 0-0 2. Totals: 16 3-3 43
Otto-Eldred (55)
Sherry 13 3-4 31, Rees 4 0-0 12, R. Schenfield 2 0-2 4, Sheeler 1 0-0 3, Blendinger 1 0-0 2, Splain 1 0-0 2, M. Schenfield 0 1-2 1, Coon 0 0-2 0. Totals: 22 4-10 55
Port 6 16 27 43
O-E 16 35 41 55
Three-point goals: Port 8 (Carter 4, DeFazio 4), O-E 6 (Rees 4, Sherry 2); Total fouls: Port 12, O-E 4; Fouled out: None.
