Island basketball team comes up just short In season opener

Both the Shelter Island School junior varsity and varsity boys basketball teams went down in defeat at Hampton Bays in a non-league season opener game.

Coach Jay Card Jr.’s team played a tough game and was trailing by just a point with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter.  Hampton Bays held on to the lead, making some big free throws down the stretch, posting a 56-49 win.

The game started off fairly evenly with the Indians down 13-12 at the end of the first quarter.  Although the Islanders only had four field goals in the opening period, three of the four were 3-pointers, two by Lucas Quigley-Dunning and one by Danny Martin.

Both players combined for all seven 3-point shots and totaled 27 points between them. The two sophomores proved in the opening game that they are key parts of the Indian offense.

Junior Luke Gilpin, last year’s leading scorer, was high scorer with 19 points, shooting 50 percent from the floor.  The team overall, kept their turnovers down to just eight, but did a poor job on the offensive boards against a significantly bigger and stronger team.

Nevertheless, Coach Card was pleased with the team’s effort throughout the game and feels that this year’s team is much improved. The Indians were outscored from the free throw line 15 to 5.  In order to be successful in close contests, the Indians must shoot better from the charity line.

Against Hampton Bays the team shot 7 of 14.

Hampton Bays were led by Antonio Scotto (16), Christian Ottati (14) and Andrew Calderon (10), who combined for 40 of the 56 points.

The team travels to Stony Brook on Saturday, December 2, for a 6:30 p.m. varsity start.