Clarke high school avenged their loss from earlier in the season to Seaford Monday night when they defeated Seaford 69-54 on their home floor.
“I thought that we played a complete game,” said head coach of Clarke Joe Hasbrouck. “ [It] was our first complete 32 minutes in a while…it felt nice to put one together finally,” Hasbrouck said.
The usual suspect in Mike Paul for Clarke got it done in the game finishing with 20 points on the night. Paul was helped by running mates Brian Sullivan who scored 18 points and Nick Caputo who netted 17 of his own and converted 9-10 from the charity stripe.
The game was close throughout much of the first half, with neither team being able to extend their lead to double- digits. Clarke was the aggressor however, and came out determined to make a statement. Paul opened up the game for Seaford with a three- pointer from the right wing and a few minutes later netted another one. Paul was the leading catalyst for his team and as their best player was handling the ball a lot up the court due to Seaford’s troubling pressure defense.” I think we were a bit more composed against their pressure, we played them the last time on the back end of a back-to-back and they’re a tough team to prepare for if you don’t have a day to get into it,” Hasbrouck said. “We ran out of steam last time and we were able to stay within ourselves for [these] 32 minutes and not do things out of our comfort-zone.”
John Cain was the early contributor for Seaford and was able to score a number of his touches from post-ups down on the block. For majority of the game he was their only consistent reliable offense to lean on through their tough scoring stretches. He was still however limited on offense and didn’t have nearly the impact he did in their first meeting “We went with a bigger starting lineup this time …. [Cain] is a good player, he gets his shot off whenever he wants, we had a little trouble with him again tonight, but being a little bigger and lankier I thought was the difference,” Hasbrouck said.
Both teams went into the half with Clarke leading 33-25, but when they came out of the break, Clarke just imposed their will on Seaford. On both sides of the floor they were faster getting to lose balls and running in transition. No one from Seaford was able to step up and stop the bleeding once Paul and his teammates got going. Clarke dominated the second half and secured a win on their home floor.
Cain lead Seaford with 14 points on the night with no one else contributing much. Clarke has now won two straight games to move to 5-7 on the year, and will look to improve Wednesday night against Friends Academy. Seaford is now 6-8 on the season and will look to get back on track at home against Mineola.
