By SPENCER BATES
PORTVILLE — With six minutes left in its Section 6 Class C Pre-Quarterfinal matchup with No. 9 seed Holland, the No. 8 seed Portville boys basketball team was staring down the possible end of its season.
After going into the half level on the scoreboard at 24-24, the Panthers slowly saw their foothold in the game disappear. The Dutchmen thrived on points off turnovers and 3-pointers and posed a significant problem when they got going downhill in the halfcourt.
Two minutes into the fourth quarter, Portville was down by 15 points. But with their season on the line, it put together a herculean effort to pull out a 64-62 victory.
“It’s been about buy-in from the beginning, and in that last time out when we were down 15 with (six) minutes left, I just said to them, ‘Your demeanor can’t change. We’ve got to change momentum,’” Portville head coach Dylan Burton said. “We throw in the press. They bought in. Their demeanor didn’t change. They believed in it right from the start and it was huge.”
Leading the charge for the Panthers were none other than team veterans Aidan DeFazio and Zach Green. DeFazio, who netted a game-high 29 points, cut the deficit to just one point behind a four-point play that came from a near-logo 3. And once the Dutchmen started to commit bodies to DeFazio, in an attempt to stop him from trying to win the game, it was Green that popped up under the rim for the easy, but critical layups.
For most of the second half, Holland walled up defensively. It identified DeFazio and Peyton Carter as Portville’s biggest scoring threats and forced them into taking tough contested shots from distance. It wasn’t until Portville started to thread the needle with passes down low that the offense started to open up.
“They started to key in on our top two guys, Peyton Carter and Aidan DeFazio, and they started to shut those two down,” Burton said. “I just kept telling the guys to get the ball down low. We finally got the ball inside to Zach (Green) and Eli Truman and as soon as we did that, the whole press collapsed. Now we can get those guys their shots from the outside. So, (Holland) did a really good job keying in on those top two guys. But we changed some things up, and it worked out for us.”
For Burton, it was special for him to see his two seniors lead the comeback the way that they did — responding to the challenge he set for them at the intermission.
“It was a 0-0 game at halftime, and I challenged them all,” Burton said. “I said, ‘The next 16 minutes really can change the rest of your season. Seniors, you can be done in 16 minutes, or you could be playing on and moving on.’ It was huge to see them step up, to come together as one unit. Aidan would beat the press, and then Zach was wide open on the backside for those couple layups. Zach’s just a huge energy guy for us. As soon as he starts flexing and screaming, the whole team gets rallied around him, and it’s just huge.”
Portville’s Peyton Carter (1) goes up for an acrobatic layup against Holland. Carter scored nine points for the Panthers in their win over the Dutchmen. (Spencer Bates)
But the credit was thrown both ways within the Portville locker room as DeFazio gave a healthy amount of credit to his team’s first-year head coach.
“Honestly, it was Coach Burton, he said, ‘it’s our demeanor,’” DeFazio said. “I got down on myself, I got foul trouble. But with six minutes left, we turned up and we let it fly. … We started quitting on ourselves. That’s what got us. I got in foul trouble. I quit. I’m the leader of the team, I can’t do that, so I brought us down. But I knew how to pick us back up, so I turned up a little.”
One of Burton’s biggest goals for the season, before an official minute had even been logged, was for his team to host a playoff game. Well, not only did he see that goal achieved, he saw his team pull out the win in an all-time classic.
“It means everything,” Burton said. “It’s been a few years since Portville has hosted a playoff game. Our goal at the beginning of the year was to host that playoff game. I told the guys (before the game), we completed that first goal. Let’s go complete the second one. Let’s move on to the next round.’ So we got a tough one against Wilson coming up, but with the way our guys showed up and played tonight, I truly believe we have an opportunity to be able to compete with anybody that’s left in the season.”
Portville now moves on to face No. 1 seed Wilson in the Class C Quarterfinal at Wilson High School on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m.
——
AT PORTVILLE
Holland (62)
J. Gerbec 7 11-15 27, Gr. Haude 7 2-2 19, Johnson 1 2-2 4, Leary 2 0-2 4, Barkey 1 1-1 3, Ga. Haude 1 0-0 3, C. Gorecki 0 2-2 2. Totals: 19 18-24 62
Portville (64)
DeFazio 11 2-5 29, Green 7 1-2 16, Carter 3 0-0 9, Foster 2 0-0 5, Truman 2 1-2 5. Totals: 25 4-9 64
Holl. 10 24 48 62
Port. 11 24 36 64
Three-point goals: Holl. 6 (Gr. Haude 3, J. Gerbec 2, Ga. Haude), Port. 10 (DeFazio 5, Carter 3, Foster, Green); Total fouls: Holl. 13, Port. 17; Fouled out: DeFazio (Port.).
