Leading off today: Bishop Loughlin moved into the final of the Mirabito STOP-DWI Holiday Classic with a
58-33 boys basketball victory Saturday against Lexington, Ky., Paul Laurence Dunbar High.
Loughlin, ranked eighth in Class AA by the New York State Sportswriters Association, will take on Louisville, Ky., Trinity on Sunday for the championship.
Highly regarded junior guard Khadeen Carrington scored 17 points to pace Loughlin, which also got 13 points and 10 rebounds from Javian Delacruz.
Loughlin reached the semifinals with a 76-60 win Friday vs. Portsmouth, Va., I.C. Norcom 60 as Carrington scored 19 points and Issak Bodon tacked on 16. Trinity's opener was a 56-52 win over Abraham Lincoln in which Railsplitters guard Isaiah Whitehead was held to two points on 0-for-11 shooting and committed five turnovers.
RFA improves to 9-0: Tournament MVP J.T. Entelisano scored three goals to lead second-ranked Rome Free Academy to a 5-4 victory over Mamaroneck in the final game of the Black Knights Tournament. Mamaroneck is ranked 14th this week in Division I.
Entelisano has five goals and four assists in his freshman season for RFA (9-0).
Boys hoops injury note: Olean took its first loss of the season Friday, dropping the IAABO final to Nichols (8-1), 66-57 as Cameron Lewis scored 17 points for the winners.
Olean played without 6-foot-7 junior Sam Ecktrom, a third-team all-state selection a season ago.
Ecktrom suffered what has been described as a strained right shoulder during a win over Canisius on Dec. 11. He didn't play two nights later in a win, but poured in 30 points to help beat Fredonia on Dec. 17 and scored 17 to top Falconer three nights later.
Format change coming? Scheduling issues and bad weather kept five teams from getting to the first day of the 47th Teike/Bernabi Wrestling Tournament in Spencerport last week, forcing organizers to scramble. What they did may be a prelude to permanent changes, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.
Rather than abiding by the traditional individual brackets, tournament officials scheduled wrestlers into groups with round-robin formats on the first day. Those results were used to seed the fields for the bracket-format that determined champions the next day.
You don’t want to go to a tournament where you get only two or three matches,” Spencerport coach Dan Glover told the paper. “It’s actually (about) bang for your buck. My hand was kind of forced and it was a good thing. Every
