After a seven-day layoff, one might have thought that the Johnston boys’ basketball team would be a little rusty, but that was not the case last Friday night as it downed the Moses Brown Quakers 75-63 at Johnston High School.
Johnston, who led from start to finish, got off to a good start early in the first half with good shooting and solid defense. Nassir Vasquez and Ryan Yankee each scored 10 points in the first 16 minutes as the Panthers controlled the tempo of the game. Yankee, 26 points, and Vasquez, 24 points, combined for 50 of Johnston’s 75 points in the game.
Jake Coro’s reverse layup gave the Panthers a 31-25 halftime lead as the Johnston defense created 11 Quaker turnovers.
“Jake Coro and Nassir Vasquez had a tremendous game for us tonight,” said Johnston head coach Steve DeMeo. “They cut to the basket very well and we also played very well defensively as a team in the first half, probably the best defensive effort of the year.”
The Panthers built their lead to as much as 18 points in the second half as their defense continued to force turnovers, coupled with some poor Moses Brown shooting. The Quakers missed some easy layups throughout the course of the game that really hurt them offensively.
A Stephen Cotoia hook shot got Johnston off to a quick start as the second half opened. Yankee and Vasquez hit 3-pointers and Cotoia hit Coro with a nice pass on a back door play, extending the home team’s lead to 45-28. A deep 3-ball by Yankee and two 3-point buckets by Vasquez gave the Panthers their biggest lead of the game at 51-33.
Yankee, who netted five 3-point shots, would foul out of the game with 2:38 left to go in the game with Johnston leading 66-53, but his teammates managed to hold it together the rest of the way.
A late Coro layup insured the Panthers of the victory as Moses Brown attempted a late but futile comeback, which was led by Chris Argys’ 16 points. Coro scored 15 points and Cotoia added 10 as Johnston had only four players enter the scoring column.
“It was a hard-fought game – Moses Brown is a really good team,” DeMeo said. “We made some mistakes towards the end of the game by making some bad fouls that stopped the clock. The clock becomes more of your enemy at the end of the game more than your opponent does.”
DeMeo commented on his team’s long layoff: “It was too long to go without playing, so we got to scrimmage Division I Smithfield – they are a bigger team than Moses Brown. We also had some good practices.”
DeMeo and his squad are looking to return back to the Division III finals, where they lost to Pilgrim last year. The Pats remain the only unbeaten team in Division III this season as they handed Johnston its only league loss back in December.
“We control our own destiny,” DeMeo said. “We just have to worry about ourselves, we have to keep on winning and would like to run the table with our remaining games. We want to get back to the championship game, we got a taste of it last year and we were not satisfied. Hopefully we can get back to the finals again this year.”
The Panthers (10-1) host Burrillville High School tonight at 7 p.m. after playing three games in four days earlier in the week.
The Panthers continued their winning ways with a 72-27 victory over Saint Patrick Academy on Saturday at Saint Raphael Academy and a 75-33 win at Davies Career and Technical High School on Monday. They have now won eight consecutive league games since that Pilgrim loss and have a 10-1 Division III record. In addition to the game with the Broncos tonight, Johnston will take part in the CCRI High School Shootout on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at the Vin Cullen Field House in Warwick. The Panthers will face Woodstock Academy from Connecticut in the first of three games.
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