Byram Hills Overcomes Another Deficit to Defeat the Eagles
Ted Repa has undoubtedly coached more talented teams at Byram Hills than his 2021-22 squad, but he would be hard-pressed to recall another with more grit and determination than his current Bobcats.
Late Saturday afternoon, those spunky, never-say-quit Bobcats staged their second consecutive comeback from a double-digit deficit in the sectional playoffs, rising to the occasion again in the final moments of the fourth quarter to earn a 47-42 quarterfinal victory over the visiting Eastchester Eagles.
Senior forward Bobby Chicoine scored a game-high 18 points and hauled in 11 rebounds, while Danny Bernstein provided an old-fashioned 3-point play with just over a minute remaining to give the Bobcats the lead for good and send them into a showdown against Poughkeepsie this Thursday evening for a berth in the Section 1, Class A final.
“The kids this year have shown this toughness, this resolve, this resiliency, and no different tonight,” said Repa after watching his third-seeded team score the game’s final seven points to overcome the sixth-seeded Eagles. “That resolve, it’s unbelievable. It’s not coaching, it’s these kids.”
The Bobcats had the lead for less than two minutes all afternoon against an Eastchester team that had come into their gym exactly three weeks earlier and handed them a 16-point regular-season defeat. This time, the Eagles limited Byram to just one basket in the first quarter, by Sean Siegel nearly three and a half minutes after the opening jump, and built a 12-4 advantage heading to the second period.
“Defensively, we were great, but the last minute of the first quarter was kind of a disaster,” said Repa about his team’s slow start. “Turnover after turnover and they capitalized.”
The first quarter ended with the Eagles’ Frankie Provenzale connecting on a 3-point shot and then Eastchester stretched its run to 11-0 when the second began with John Russell scoring on a layup and Luke Delorenzo hitting a short jump hook in the lane. The Bobcats, who had trailed Somers by 14 points in the second half of their opening-round win four days earlier, were suddenly facing a 16-4 deficit.
But the Bobcats immediately began clawing their way back into the contest. Two minutes into the second quarter, Chicoine posted up inside and scored under the basket. Bernstein soon followed with a pullup trey from the left wing. With 4:35 left in the half, Chicoine drained a 3-pointer from the top of the key, cutting the Eagles’ lead to just four points.
Eastchester still had a four-point margin after Russell, who scored a team-high 17 points, made a turnaround jumper just inside the top of the key with 1:14 remaining before halftime. But with exactly a minute to go, Chicoine took a pass from Ben Dreilinger to score a layup and then the Bobcats took their only lead of the first half when sophomore Tyson Repa narrowly beat the buzzer with a 3-pointer from just left of the key.
After battling so hard to finally take the 21-20 halftime lead, Byram Hills spent the entire third quarter behind again once the Eagles’ 6-foot-6 Michael Lawlor scored on a turnaround jumper in the lane 25 seconds into the period. A 3-point shot by Lawlor from the left corner midway through the quarter gave Eastchester a six-point cushion, and the Bobcats didn’t get on the board in the second half until Chicoine converted on a put-back with 3:30 left in the third.
Byram began the fourth quarter trailing 32-28 and the deficit grew to five points a couple minutes in when Brendan Sullivan beat the Bobcats down the floor, received a pass and deftly switched to his left hand for a layup. A desperate coach Repa called a timeout and his team responded again, outscoring the Eagles 14-4 over the game’s final five and a half minutes.
The big finish by the Bobcats began with a Chicoine layup and then a conventional 3-point play by Siegel that tied the game at 38-apiece with 4:59 on the clock. Byram then went scoreless for over two minutes while the Eagles retook the lead on a Russell 3-pointer with 3:07 remaining. A free throw from Ryan Bochenski, his only point of the game, gave Eastchester a 42-40 edge with 2:02 to go.
But the Eagles never scored again and Bernstein gave Byram the lead for good when he took a pass under the basket from Benny Rakower and double-pumped in the air before scoring underneath while being fouled. His free throw gave the Bobcats a 43-42 lead with 1:09 to play.
Just nine seconds later, Rakower provided the Bobcats with a huge steal, jumping the passing lane and diving head first near the Eastchester bench to secure the ball.
“Oh my gosh,” said Repa about the incredible hustle play from his senior forward. “That’s what Benny does for us. It’s the intangibles. Literally willing to do anything and to sacrifice anything for the team, for the win.”
Rakower’s big defensive play set the stage for Tyson Repa, who had injured his shoulder celebrating the Bobcats’ overtime win over the Tuskers, to deliver the dagger that all but finished the Eagles. With 38 seconds left, he swished his second extremely long, top-of-the-key 3-pointer of the final quarter, giving Byram Hills a four-point advantage. Soon the Bobcat student section would be racing onto the court to congratulate the team for advancing to the semifinals.
Coach Repa, who had thought his team’s title hopes were finished late in the opening round against Somers, was thrilled with the Bobcats’ clutch plays down the stretch, on both ends of the court.
“Eastchester’s a really good team,” he said. “They did a really good job defensively taking us out of what we wanted to do, for the most part. It took a few plays like that to pull it out.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
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