Rams and Lady Rams drop their last basketball deuce
February 14, 2024 at 10:41 p.m.
The best thing you can say about February is that it isn't January. Major League Baseball started its pitchers’ and catchers’ workouts Monday (2/12) in warm weather climes stretching from Arizona to Florida and the local scholastic sports winter season has come to an end with the promise of better days ahead.
But the season-ending curtain did not drop in time, alas, to stop the Rams and Lady Rams basketball teams from winding up their seasons by adding more Ls to their losing records in the past week or so.
Both teams dropped a deuce with more downs than a football team. Albeit not as many as the pro hoops Detroit Pistons who lost 28 games in a row, blowing a 21-point lead before losing to the Celtics in overtime for the record-breaking loss that tied the Philadelphia 76ers for the longest losing streak in the history of the National Basketball Association.
Even pros lose
The point here is that even the pros lose. A lot. And it's no crime for high school teams to lose as long as they work hard, play hard, and try hard. And the Port Chester hoops teams certainly check all those boxes.
Although it is hard to discern that from the final scores of their last two away games because while the locals were on the road, they certainly didn't look or play as though they had their act together. And the play's the thing. And perception is reality.
The Rams, for example, lost by 30 points to White Plains by a score of 86-56 and by 61 to Harrison with the Huskies winning 85-24.
The Lady Rams made things a lot closer, bowing to Yonkers Montessori 79-53 and losing to Carmel by a score of 42-31.
So both those games are best remembered as forgotten.
Accentuate the positives
And it's best to reflect on the good times. Even when the Rams coach fails to respond to repeated emails requesting that he say anything positive about his team.
And there have been positives for both teams.
Dominican Republic senior transfer Guillermo (Memo) Zabala, for example, set a school record by scoring 60 points in a close home loss to Lincoln and came back in a return match away to score 45 points in a loss by a lot to the same Lincs on his way to becoming the first player in Ram history to score more than 1,000 points during his two-year varsity career. And, despite his team's losing record, Zabala has a good shot at making the All-Conference team as he did last year.
The Rams have a potentially promising group coming back next year in juniors Shawn Cheriyan, Daniel Ebol, Angel Mata and Xavier Tapia, sophomores Brandon Flores Alvarez and Walquidi Valerio Sosa and smooth junior varsity call up Kayleeb George who may be the Big the Rams have been looking for all season long. And while the seniors didn't win much, they set a good hustling example, that number including Joey Ciciriello, Kesley Siqueira, Ryan Gagnon, Nathan Provencher, Orhan Eski and David Pascual. And, of course, nobody did it better than Zabala.
Work in progress
So chalk up the Rams’ season as a work in progress and keep your fingers crossed that there is more progress next year.
As for the Lady Rams, head coach Danny Davis had his team playing solid, cohesive basketball with senior Samantha (Sam) Munoz coming into her own as a dependable veteran backcourt presence while senior Nataly Garcia was a solid back-up. Junior Elise Thomas emerged as the team's badly needed Big while fellow junior Karah Provenzano contributed to a poised backcourt that passed well, set up plays like they knew what they were doing and kept the ball moving unselfishly without anybody gunning. And eighth-grade wunderkind McKayla McLoughlin continually looked like the multi-talented point guard who could well take the team to the next level.
Strong support system
Especially with a strong support system that includes hard-driving junior Nagare Jones and a bumper crop of underclassmen in freshmen Analia Sosa, Alyssa Gagnon, Swayda Hunter, Isabela Lopez and Gianna Rende and sophomore Yvonne Santiago.
The most encouraging sign was the fact that the Lady Rams work so well together that they had three different scorers in recent games: McLoughlin had a season high 35, Munoz had a career high 22 and Thomas had a breakout 19. And Davis has that nucleus coming back.
So while it has been a hoops winter of discontent around Port Chester, hope springs eternal that things will be a lot better next year. And maybe there will be a lot more ups than downs.
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