KJ Williams has another career night in Liberty High School's rout of Nazareth in boys basketball

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

The recent boys basketball histories of Liberty High School and Nazareth are hopelessly intertwined, not so much through design but by fate.

The two programs intersected Friday night at Memorial Gym in Bethlehem where sophomore swingman KJ Williams had his second straight 23-point game -- matching his career high -- as Liberty routed Nazareth 65-40, keeping the Hurricanes in a tie with Easton for a wild card berth in the upcoming Lehigh Valley Conference tournament.

It was also the 11th win for coach Chad Landis' Hurricanes (11-5 overall, 7-3 LVC), punching their ticket for the District 11 Class AAAA playoffs.

Prior to the game, there was a tribute to both Todd Rothrock and Derek Kehoe. Rothrock, a former Nazareth player, was Liberty's former coach who died of a heart attack in August 2008.

Kehoe, a former Nazareth player, died of cancer in October 2006.

In addition, Chuck Dibilio, Nazareth's standout running back and The Express-Times Football Player of the Year in 2010 who suffered a stroke last week at Princeton, attended the game. He was acknowledge and received a rousing ovation as well by the crowd of about 900.

As for the game, Liberty led 17-14 after the first eight minutes behind eight points by Williams in the last 3:29 of the quarter. The 6-foot-3 forward added seven more in the second quarter to help Liberty take a 37-22 lead at halftime.

So what's got into Williams, who was averaging nine points per game going into the week but has totaled 46 points in his last two outings?

"I was basically a rebounder in the early part of the season playing down on the low block," said Williams, whose athletic future appears to be as a wide receiver in football. "Then Coach (Landis) moved me out to the wing. I like it more; it seems to play to my strengths."

Landis also made a recent switch where he inserted junior Gerald Vital into the lineup and transformed Joey Torres from a starter to sixth man.

"It opened things up for KJ and what it did for us with Joey was allow him to go in and play any position on the floor that we needed," Landis said. "It really changed things for us."

Vital contributed a career-high 10 points, hitting 5 of 6 shots from the floor. The 6-5 Erik Carlstrom also came off the bench to contribute nine points and seven rebounds, both personal bests for him as well.

As for Nazareth, the picture was not as rosy. The Blue Eagles were entertaining thoughts of getting into the district tournament as recently as two weeks ago but a three-game losing streak has dropped them to 6-10 overall and 2-8 in the LVC.

"We struggle against athletic teams and Liberty certainly fits that category," Nazareth coach Joe Arndt said. "We were giving up 51 points a game and now we're letting teams get into the 60s and 70s. We don't have enough firepower offensively to allow that many points."

More telling was Liberty's 37-20 edge on the backboards, the result of the Hurricanes' quickness allowing them to repeatedly beat the Eagles to loose balls.

Colin Kassis led Nazareth with nine points. The Blue Eagle front line of 6-3 Grant Searfoss, 6-3 Tyler Smith and 6-5 Dan Harding got off to a promising start but combined for just 16 points largely because of foul trouble.

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