Once upon a time, Bainbridge-Guilford and Greene seemed to square off in league championship games nearly every year. It’s been 13 seasons since the two made the Susquenango Association (now Midstate Athletic Conference) a yearly date, and that storied 1990s rivalry is renewed Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at Oneonta State’s Fieldhouse in the MAC title game.
“Four years in a row we met for the league championship,” said B-G coach Bob Conway, who also remembered the results of those games well. “Yup, they got better of us in those games.”
Conway and Greene head coach Bill Case battled on opposite ends of the basketball floor during those wars, and remain on the sidelines all those years later. The duo has over 800 combined career wins, and umpteen division titles and league championships over their long careers. “It’s been a great rivalry, friendly and competitive over the years,” Conway said, whose club is the defending league champion.
Each club comes into the contest with 17 wins, and B-G is in the midst of the school’s best-ever winning streak. Since an opening-game loss to Unatego, the Bobcats have improved steadily while winning those 17 aforementioned games. Mariah Schaeffer eclipsed the 1,000-point mark over two weeks ago, and Dani Conway crossed that same 1,000-point threshold last Friday. The prolific pair combines to average over 36 points a game, and double figures totals in rebounds and assists. “I think the advantage they have is that either one of those two could put up 30 points on a given night,” Case said, who led his team to its first division title since the 1994-1995 campaign. “I think we have a little more balance in our scoring and we like to go more up-tempo. I think they will try to slow the game down.”
Greene, like B-G, finished with a perfect 10-0 division mark, and its two losses came in December tournaments losing in the finals of the Norwich Pennysaver Tournament and Greene Holiday Tournament. The Trojans feature three players – Barb Borst, Megan McDermott, and Liz Wentlent – who regularly score in double figures, and a fourth in sophomore Erin Smith who has four double figures scoring games and is the team’s assists leader. “They are really balanced and athletic,” Conway said in sizing up the Trojans. “They are a typical Bill Case-coached team that is fundamentally sound and plays with intensity.”
Everyone knows about B-G’s leading scorers, an “X-factor” could be one of the three other starters: Kimmy Hart, Liz Holbert or Ellery Gager. Gager and Holbert have double figures scoring games this season, while Hart has asserted herself as a defensive stopper.
“B-G is not a two-person team, they’re a five-person team,” Case said, pointing out that the Bobcats are much more than Schaeffer and Conway on offense. “The whole team has bought into their defensive and offensive philosophies, and they have five players making the sacrifices to win.”