Malverne dominated their host in Carle Place, 77-39, on Friday night. The team was completely unstoppable on offense, while being disruptive on defense. Carle Place had completely no answer for anything that was thrown their way on the evening.
The last time that Carle Place held a lead was when they were up 9-8 with 3:45 remaining in the first quarter, it went downhill quickly from there. Malverne quickly began to pile on the score in bunches, knocking down shots from the outside and getting to the free throw line to stop the clock and put points on the board. The score went from Carle Place up one to giving up a 38-8 run to go down by the score of 46-18 to end the half. No particular player from Malverne was doing all of them damage but collectively they were playing efficiently as a unit.
“ The defense is the key, we didn’t foul but we put pressure on the ball, we were able to get a couple rebounds and we tried to get deflections,” said associate coach Walt Axenoff after the game. Malverne’s defensive tenacity is what put the game away late in the first half due to them causing turnovers and running out in transition. It was obvious from the outset that Malverne had the more athletic team, and they made that apparent all night, in key situations such as transition.
“It is just constantly push the ball up, push the ball up,” Axenoff said. “Everyone is going to be tough in the first quarter but if we can get their legs out in the second or the third, with our ability because we think we are conditioned pretty good, we should be able to run, and today we were.”
Michael Warren led Maleverne in scoring pouring in 22 points with Jayden Seraphin netting 14 points of his own to help their team improve to 9-5 on the year. Christopher Deveau was the only player for Carle Place who scored above double digits and he had 17 points on the evening. Carle place moves to 2-10 on the year with their next game coming against Academy Charter School on Monday. Malverne will look to keep up their dominance against Cold Spring Harbor on Monday.
