Bangor picks up pace against Notre Dame

FROM KEITH GROLLER

Within a span of about 20 hours, Bangor's boys basketball team not only firmed up its status as the Colonial League's best, but also showed it may be one of the area's most versatile clubs as well.

The Slaters outran host Notre Dame late Saturday afternoon, 68-50, to finish off a back-to-back sweep of two of their biggest Colonial challengers.

And in beating Wilson 42-39 Friday night in a slow-paced, grinder and Notre Dame in a more free-wheeling contest, Bangor (14-1, 10-0 Colonial) proved it can win any style of game.

"We won two games here that had very contrasting styles," Slaters coach Bron Holland. "Wilson slowed it down on us and it was grind-it-out type of game on every possession like it always is with them. Today, we got back to running up and down the floor.
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"I tell the guys that winning the championship is the hardest thing they are ever going to have to do. You're going to have nights where you don't shoot well, or play well, but you've got to win on the defensive end. That's what we're doing."

The commitment to defense was critical in Bangor leading 31-24 at halftime despite making just 10 of 33 shots from the field in the first half.

Andy Mulitsch drained three 3-pointers in the first quarter, but had just two points in the second period.

Mulitsch missed his first two 3-point attempts of the third quarter, but Ben Ammerman got the Slaters going with seven of his 11 points coming in the third period.

Ammerman is one of the team's many unsung heroes. The 6-foot-1 senior averages under five points per game, but showed he can deliver when his team's stars — namely Mulitsch, Matt Carey and Kerry Reider — need some help.

"I just play hard and if the points come to me, they come to me," Ammerman said. "Usually the other guys are the ones scoring, and I try to get the load off them a little bit."

Mulitsch finished with 21 points, including four treys, but Holland said that while his team can dazzle with its long-range shooting displays, it has the ability to score in a number of ways.

"We're very well balanced," he said. "If they take away Andy, we got Matty. [Justin] Ringland's playing great, Alex Colton had a nice jump hook inside. We make a concerted effort to dump the ball inside in every game. To win a championship, we need an inside presence and we have one."

Notre Dame (8-5, 5-3) didn't have enough answers. The Crusaders had a 4-3 lead through three minutes, but simply couldn't keep pace with Bangor.

Highly touted freshman Tyler Kohl gave Notre Dame a lift with eight points off the bench in the first quarter, but scored just five points the rest of the way and was taken out of game midway through the fourth quarter.

Kohl, who averages 19 points per game, got into a brief altercation with Bangor's Reider and never seemed to get in sync.

Even Ammerman noted that Kohl "didn't play too hard on the defensive end."

"Tyler didn't react real well and we didn't do a good job of getting him the ball and he kind of took that to the defensive end with him," Notre Dame coach Pat Boyle said. "We had to go with the unit that was playing the hardest at that time. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, but Tyler's young and he has to react better to certain situations."

Because of a flurry of postponements, Notre Dame was playing its first game in eight days and only its second since Jan. 8. It was obvious that the Crusaders lacked continuity and harmony.

Boyle noted the difference between his squad and the more polished Slaters.

"Bangor clearly played harder than we did today," Boyle said. "One time they had three of their guys collide going for the ball, one got it and laid it in. They battle and scrap for every single ball and that's what we need to do."

Notre Dame was within 31-27 after an Adam Ambielli 3-pointer in the first minute of the third quarter, but Ammerman responded with a three-point play at the other end to kick-start a 6-0 run and the Crusaders were never really in it from there.

While Bangor is a lock to win the North Division and earn one of the Colonial's four tournament spots, Notre Dame is in a tough six-team fight to earn one of the three remaining berths.

"We have to play four games in the next week and if we're going to make a run, we're going to have to get everybody on the same page in a hurry," Boyle said. "I'm a little shell-shocked from some of the things that happened today. For the first time all season, we had guys bickering back and forth and our body language wasn't good. We just didn't have good interaction. Hopefully, it's just a one-day thing."

kgroller@mcall.com

610-820-6740