Hamilton West’s Dane Riley goes up for the jump shot over a Steinert defender. Photo by Dan Danko III

By Rich Fisher
Fish4scores.com

Jan. 19: When you’re on a roll and you’re playing an arch-rival, it doesn’t matter how bad it looks as long as it’s a win.

Thus, the Hamilton West boys’ basketball team did not mind that it uglied its way to a 36-27 victory over visiting Steinert tonight.

“We thought about this all week,” Dane “Sponge Bob” Riley said. “It’s a big rivalry game, we always want to win this.”

And so they did, thanks in huge part to another Riley workmanlike effort. The senior collected 10 points, 17 rebounds and six blocked shots, as his improved play has coincided with Hamilton’s six-game winning streak.

“Oh man; he’s just a monster down there,” guard Javon Porter said. “He does the dirty work for us.”

Dirty work in a dirty game, as the first half scores would indicate. Steinert (2-10) led 6-2 after one quarter before Hamilton (7-3) managed to pull ahead 12-10 at halftime. The two teams combined for almost as many turnovers (20) in the half as points. Hamilton shot 4-for-23 and Steinert 3-for-15.

Hamilton coach Jay Malloy just chalked it up to Steinert-Hamilton.

“I actually went back to when Brandon Johnson was playing for Chris (Raba) and we went to Steinert and the score 29-25,” Malloy said. “I don’t want to say it’s classic, but it’s a rivalry game. I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy in any way. I’m actually glad it was that way. The last few games we’ve been scoring, putting up 60 a game, and not every game is gonna be like that.”

The Hornets were able to gather themselves after intermission, as Chris Charles scored six of his eight points in the third quarter and Javon Porter added four of his eight points and two steals that helped spark a 13-2 run over the final five minutes.

“We came out a little bit slow today,” Porter said. “Usually we come out fast. . .fast enough at least to be up by 10 at half. But we had a couple turnovers here and there, we just started out very slow today.”

Steinert vs Hamilton West Boys Varsity Basketball.  Photos by Dan Danko III and Michael A. Sabo

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”79″ gal_title=”Steinert vs Hamilton West Boys Basketball 1-19-2018″]

But Porter was there to speed things up.

“When he got a chance to get them going with the fast break, they went ahead and got out,” Steinert coach Kyle Flanagan said. “They get to the rim and all of a sudden it’s a little bit different basketball game. Coach (Malloy) made some decent adjustments to go ahead and combat the screening up top with the zone, to try to get them to break the zone we had set up.”

It was a different story in the first half. Hamilton scored its first basket with 20 seconds left in the first quarter and took its first lead at 11-10. The game was tied at 14 before Zahir Davis hit the second of his two 3-pointers to start the Hornets on their decisive run.

“I told the guys at halftime ‘If you told me we had 10 or 12 points, I’d have told you we’re gonna be down by 10,” Malloy said. “But we played solid defense in the halfcourt in the second half and we finished it off.”

Steinert had the game where it wanted with the low score. But when Hamilton finally started to score, Steinert never did as the Spartans were held to single digits each of the first three quarters.

“Obviously on our end, we gotta make shots,” said Flanagan, whose team was coming off a 1-point loss at Robbinsville and a win over Delran. “Exponentially this week, we grew as a team as far as our execution and mindset, but tonight we couldn’t get any shots to fall to keep us in that third quarter.”

Lamont Morrison led Steinert with 11 points and seven rebounds, while Mario Mazur had eight points. Charles and Richmond Shasha each had five boards for Hamilton.

Steinert girls push winning streak to seven as Dorner goes wild

Tatiana Dorner filled up the stat sheet tonight in pacing the Steinert girls to a 50-20 win over Hamilton. The senior guard collected 13 points, seven rebounds, seven steals and five assists as the Spartans (10-3) won their seventh straight.

Natalie Mehl had 11 for Steinert, while Erika Golik tallied six points and eight rebounds and Leila Collazo had seven points, three boards, two assists and four steals. Jayda Big chipped in with seven rebounds, three steals and two assists.

Jones and Kerekes power Nottingham’s boys and girls to victories

Coming off its first loss of the season, Nottingham’s boys bounced back with an 88-44 win over Lawrence to move to 10-1. The Winter Jo-Storm was coming down in full force, as Richie Jones poured in 30 points, Cliff Joseph had 27 and Darell Johnson scored 21.

The suddenly surging Northstar girls won for the third time in four games with a 42-31 win over Lawrence. Liz Kerekes scored 20 points as Nottingham (5-6) to pulled within one win of .500. Coming off her 25-point outburst on Tuesday, Madison Diaz tickled the twine for four 3-pointers en route to 12 points.