It was not a good night for Xaverian coach Jack Alesi and his squad last Friday at St. Francis Prep.
The team missed foul shots and failed to get its offense flowing in the Clippers’ 59–44 loss to the Terriers in Brooklyn-Queens boys’ basketball. Alesi blamed himself for the performance.
“I think it’s poor coaching. I put it on me,” he said. “Right now, we are not playing as crisply as we would like to. We just need to do a better job.”
The play of St. Francis Prep senior Shane Herrity didn’t help the Clippers either. He scored 17 of his 21 points in the second half, and started off the third quarter with six of St. Francis Prep’s eight points to give the Fresh Meadows school a 35–28 lead. Alesi said Herritty’s play really hurt the Clippers.
“He’s a good player,” he said. “It was an even game. They were a little crisper and we were not reading things correctly.”
Herrity continued his offensive display by hitting a floater to put St. Francis Prep (4–4, 1–3) up 39–31 at the end of three. Herrity wasn’t done after the third. The senior scored the first three points of the fourth to give the Terriers a 42–31 advantage with 5:58 left in the game.
It looked like Xaverian (2–2, 1–2) had a comeback brewing after it scored four-straight points on a pair of free throws by Doyin Issac, who led the Clippers with 14 points, and a layup by Nyontay Wisseh, who had eight second-half points. That cut the Terriers’ lead to 42–35, but the Clippers’ inability to make shots hurt down the final stretch.
Alesi said he felt like his team played better than the 15-point loss suggested.
“We didn’t play as poorly as the score looked,” he said. “We missed a bunch of foul shots. It’s an early season game. We just made some bad decisions. We didn’t play our best game.”
Xavierian’s offense looked like it was going to start off as it had five different scorers in the first quarter, but trailed 20–13. The Clippers came back behind five points from Issac in the second to cut the Terrier lead to 27–23, but missed shots and played too sloppily to capitalize.
Alesi said he knows that this performance doesn’t reflect his team’s ability. His team needs to keep playing and straighten out some of the early season problems.
“Right now we are not the team we are going to be,” Alesi said. “We may need to simplify some things to make them clearer but I think we looked more like a confused team out there then a bad team.”
