Tag: Sachem East

ROBERT O’ROURK PHOTO | Riverhead senior Naysha Trent leads the Blue Waves against Sachem East tonight.

The road to the county championship appeared to run through Sachem East last season. The Flaming Arrows sat atop the Class AA bracket, the No. 1 seed and seemingly the No. 1 obstacle for Riverhead to get through.

On the opposite side of the bracket, the No. 3 Blue Waves figured they’d meet the Flaming Arrows in the county finals.

Only that matchup never came to fruition after Hauppauge picked off Sachem in the semifinals.

Tonight, the Blue Waves and Flaming Arrows resume their postseason rivalry when Riverhead travels to Sachem for a 5:45 p.m. tip-off in the Class AA quarterfinals. [Check back for live updates during the game]. It was the same spot the Blue Waves found themselves in two years ago, when the Flaming Arrows won 76-45.

Riverhead, behind 42 points from Shanice Allen and Naysha Trent, cruised in the first round of the playoffs last Thursday against Half Hollow Hills East, 61-36.

The Flaming Arrows, seeded 2nd, come into tonight’s game off a 61-31 win over Brentwood in the first round. The League I champion Arrows are 16-2 and have won eight straight.

The Blue Waves will have to contain Sachem East guard Katie Doherty, who comes into the game averaging 16.5 points per game. The Flaming Arrows aren’t as dynamic an offensive team as some of their recent teams, but they still have another talented player who can score in Kathleen Everson. Emily Carmel also gives them a threat from beyond the arc.

The winner of today’s game advances to the semifinals against No. 3 Walt Whitman or No. 11 Bellport Saturday.

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GARRET MEADE PHOTO | Shaniece Allen of Riverhead tried to get a shot off despite the defensive efforts of Allie Drake (No. 44) and another unidentified Sachem East player.

FARMINGVILLE

The Riverhead High School girls basketball coach, Dave Spinella, was right on the mark when he described Sachem East High School as a castle on a hill. And what a castle it is.

Sachem East is one of the most impressive public high schools in Suffolk County. It is relatively new, having opened in 2004. The campus has a rustic appearance. The football team plays on neat-looking field turf. After walking into the school building, one just has to stop and take a look at the attractive trophy case.

The gym itself is nice looking, color coordinated with the red and gold of the Flaming Arrows.

Sachem East also has a girls basketball team that matches the fine surroundings, and what a team it is. The Flaming Arrows are the defending New York State Class AA champions and the reigning five-time League I champions. Led by their sharp-shooting junior guard, Meagan Doherty, they can knock down three-point shots with the best of them and zip passes around accurately and efficiently. They can even throw in a couple of back-door layups.

That is who the Riverhead Blue Waves had to contend with last Thursday night in the county quarterfinals.

By all reports and appearances, the Blue Waves were loose, relaxed and confident before the game. Players sang and danced to music as they went about the process of preparing for their next challenge.

“We were ready to go,” said Riverhead’s talented sophomore guard, Shaniece Allen.

But when the time came for the teams to hit the court and test their mettle, Sachem East’s quality prevailed — by 31 points!

The best way to describe Sachem East is to call it a complete team from top to bottom. The Flaming Arrows play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. They can serve as a team Riverhead ought to strive to be. As good as the Blue Waves are, they still have a way to go. The 76-45 final score in Sachem East’s favor speaks volumes. Riverhead scored 12 points under its average and gave up about 30 points more than it usually surrenders.

“It’s disappointing,” Spinella said. “You got to execute, and they executed better than we did, and they shot much better than we did.”

Indeed, Sachem East was good on 57.4 percent of its field-goal attempts. Riverhead shot 34 percent.

“I think we are just completely taking off right now,” Doherty said. “This is going to be the peak of our season. I can just tell. We’re all in, we want to win, and we want to get to the states again.”

And what about Riverhead?

The Blue Waves do not have a senior among them, so they should all return next season. The team looks well-placed to make a strong run next season. Riverhead has one of the best guard tandems in the county in Allen and junior point guard Jalyn Brown. Allen averaged 14.9 points per game during the regular season and Brown was good for 13.4. Melodee Riley, a junior forward, has quite a vertical leap and plays taller than her 5 feet 7 inches. Kayla Nazario, a sophomore forward who transferred from Virginia, was a find for Riverhead. She has undoubted athletic ability, and if the Blue Waves get more offensive production from her next season, that would help the team a good deal.

What Sachem East had that Riverhead didn’t have last Thursday night was more scoring options.

“I think we just need to become better shooters,” said Allen.

Riverhead could do worse than to try to emulate Sachem East. The Flaming Arrows qualified for their fourth straight county final, and that’s not shabby, especially in Class AA. When a team establishes a record like that, winning becomes expected.

“There comes a point in time where they grow to expect you to do well, and it’s cool,” said Matt Brisson, the only coach Sachem East has had. “It’s called culture, but at the same time there’s so much work that goes into it.”

The affable Brisson has an engaging sense of humor.

“The parents are phenomenal,” he said. “I’m crazy. I have [the players practicing] all hours at night, and no one’s blown up my car yet and I haven’t really had too many death threats.”

Winning has a way of preventing that sort of stuff.

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GARRET MEADE PHOTO | Riverhead's Shaniece Allen faced an obstacle in Sachem East's Samantha Drake during their county quarterfinal.

FARMINGVILLE — Odd as it may sound, the defending New York State Class AA girls basketball champion Sachem East Flaming Arrows have found drawing fans to their home games to be something of a challenge. Then again, there is a reason for it.

“We have a hard time getting people to come watch our games,” Sachem East guard Meagan Doherty explained. “Every time they come we’re winning by 20, so what’s the fun of seeing that?”

Interesting point.

If Sachem East keeps playing the way it has, it could find itself in a position to capture another state crown.

GARRET MEADE PHOTO | Jalyn Brown was consoled by Riverhead Coach Dave Spinella.

Sachem East’s execution was on Thursday night when it put an end to the Riverhead Blue Waves’ season with a 76-45 quarterfinal victory in front of a decent-sized crowd, although good seats were available.

“I think we played amazing,” Doherty said. “We’re not going to get much better than this.”

The home fans who were there had to like what they saw. Sachem East, which opened in 2004, has a beautiful high school, sitting atop a hill like a castle, a neat gym and a great team. League I champions for the past five years, the Flaming Arrows have a sharp shooting touch, splendid ball movement and the sort of chemistry that doesn’t develop overnight.

“It takes a long time for the cake to bake,” Sachem East Coach Matt Brisson said. “We say it all the time. You put those ingredients in, you set it at 350, and then you got to work.”

That work has paid off for third-seeded Sachem East (16-2). It will play the No. 2 North Babylon Bulldogs in the semifinals on Monday at Farmingdale State College.

Meagan Doherty led five Sachem East scorers in double figures with 23 points against No. 6 Riverhead (14-6). Her sister, Katie Doherty, and Allie Drake added 13 points apiece while Emily Carmel and Kathleen Everson provided 10 points each for Sachem East. Katie Doherty also had 10 assists. Everson and Drake grabbed nine rebounds each.

The Flaming Arrows shot a red-hot 57.4 percent from the floor while Riverhead had a 34-percent accuracy rate. A complete team, Sachem East received 23 points from its bench; Riverhead had none.

GARRET MEADE PHOTO | From right, Kayla Nazario, Shaniece Allen and Aly Doscinski watched from the bench as the final minutes of their season ticked down.

“Their shooters are phenomenal,” said guard Shaniece Allen, who was Riverhead’s top scorer with 18 points. “They could shoot, they could drive; they got all-around players.”

If the assist-to-turnover ratio is anything to judge by, look at these numbers for Sachem East: 28 assists, nine turnovers. Not bad.

Sachem East used a 20-3 run to take a 20-8 lead late in the first quarter. The Blue Waves pulled to within five points of Sachem East three times after that at 36-31, 40-35 and 42-37, but the Flaming Arrows then pulled away. Sachem East seemed to make shot after shot, and finished strong by hitting 10 of its final 13 field-goal attempts. The final score was the largest margin of the game.

Not even a 13-point, 10-rebound performance by Riverhead’s Melodee Riley was enough to stop that.

“They shoot better than any team we’ve seen all year,” said Riverhead Coach Dave Spinella, who does not have any seniors on his team. “We just need to be a little more disciplined, defensively and offensively.”

Riverhead faced a disciplined and motivated team in Sachem East, which would like to return to Hudson Valley Community College next month to defend its state crown.

“It helps us 100 percent,” Meagan Doherty said. “People think that it takes our hunger away, but it really didn’t. We will do whatever it takes to get back there and have that feeling again.”

Meagan Doherty, whose older sister, Kristen, is a starter for Boston College, is unquestionably driven. The junior missed the first several games this season and has been playing in pain with a mysterious knee ailment. That didn’t prevent her, however, from finishing the regular season with a team-leading average of 14.9 points per game and 33 three-pointers. As a team, Sachem East totaled 97 threes, the second-most in the county.

With a team that starts two freshmen and two sophomores, Sachem East should be good for a while, too. In the meantime, Meagan Doherty said she can sense another county title on the horizon.

A banner commemorating last season’s state championship has not been hung up yet on the gym wall at Sachem East High School. “We don’t make a big deal out of it,” said Meagan Doherty.

Perhaps management is waiting for a second state title. Maybe that would bring the fans in.

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