Varsity Insider

Greetings, this is Brian Heyman pinch hitting for Josh.

For those who love seeing two teams filling up the basket, Pearl River’s gym wasn’t the place to be Friday night. But Albertus Magnus made enough big shots down the stretch to hold off the Pirates 52-45.

Falcons standout forward Tyler Sayre was held to 10 points, with Sean Wilson doing the bulk of the defensive work. But coach Pat McFadden said Sayre has also been fighting the flu this week. He did deliver six of his points in the final quarter, and he grabbed 12 rebounds overall.

Senior point guard Pat McGuinness also scored six of his 16 in that fourth quarter to help the Falcons stay alive in the League 4-B race and in the race to be recognized as one of the top two teams in Rockland along with Tappan Zee.

“I just thought his effort was tremendous, both offensively and defensively and running the club,” McFadden said of McGuinness. “I think he realizes all of those goals and that’s one of the reasons it happened.”

Albertus will have another showdown with TZ next Friday night in the Dutchmen’s gym. The Falcons are 11-1 and the “1” came against Tappan Zee, which is undefeated in the league.

“Obviously, it’s a big game next Friday,” McFadden said. “At this time of year, they’re all big games.”

Pearl River missed 13 of 14 shots to start this game and scored six points in the first quarter. It scored nine in both the second and third quarters before scoring 21 in the fourth. Joe Clinton led the Pirates with 14 points and Austin O’Toole added 13.

“We played well enough defensively to win,” coach Jerry Houston Jr. said. “Unfortunately, offensively we were bad. We really struggled. We really didn’t get great shooting opportunities and that’s a credit to Albertus defending us very well. Some nights you just just say, ‘The ball didn’t go in.’ Tonight I don’t feel was one of those nights. I feel like tonight we did not do a good job of getting good shots.”

But the Pirates, who had a three-game losing streak in December, with Clinton injured for two of those games, have been very competitive outside of a blowout loss to TZ. In fact, this loss to Albertus snapped a five-game winning streak.

“We’ve had one game that was very lopsided in our favor, but it’s been a grind,” Houston said. “I think it’s a credit to the guys that are here that with the exception of our first game with Tappan Zee, we’ve been around and close in just about every game, if not winning every game.”

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