By Aidan Joly
Ballston Spa --
After a tight first three quarters, CBA finally pulled away in the final eight minutes and grabbed a 48-35 win against Ballston Spa on Friday night at Ballston Spa High School.
Owning just a two-point lead heading into the fourth quarter, the Brothers scored the first five points of that stanza to give them a 35-28 lead, its largest lead since the first quarter. It was a personal run from Leonard Buddington III, who scored all five of those points.
After that, CBA used their two big men, Ayden Harrison and David Clement, in the paint to out-score the Scotties 18-7 in the fourth quarter. Harrison finished with a team-high 17 points, while Clement had 15.
“We made a couple stops and got a couple baskets and that put us in a pretty good position for them to have to rush some things, so that was good for us,” CBA head coach Dave Doemel said. “I thought Ayden Harrison had a couple excellent moves right when we needed them.”
CBA was in control of the lead most of the game right from the jump, scoring the first eight points of the game, but Ballston Spa clawed back slowly but surely, never trailing by more than seven throughout the second and third quarters. At one point, they owned a slim lead late in the third quarter before CBA scoring the final four points of that frame, a 9-0 run that bridged the end of the third and beginning of the fourth.
Ballston Spa did have to fight through some adversity, getting in some foul trouble and losing 6’7” forward Jaxen Potter in the first quarter due to injury. Despite all of this, they still kept it a game.
“A lot of things just went against us through the first 24 minutes of basketball but it’s what I like most this group of guys, it never slowed them down. It was still a basketball game the whole way, even with those chips falling against us,” Ballston Spa head coach Ben Eldridge said. “We just had to play a different game than we’re used to playing and eventually ran out the tank.”
Ballston Spa was paced by Nick Verdile’s 19 points, the only Scottie to finish in double figures. Blane Zoller had eight points. With the loss, they drop to 6-2.
CBA improves to 9-2 with the victory.
“I’m very proud of the guys because that’s about as hard a team as you can get,” Doemel said. “I was very pleased with our defensive effort and I was happy we did that because our offense was a little stagnant.”
