Norwich enters the Section IV Class A basketball championship game as the lower seed, but likely the favorite when it squares off with top-seeded Elmira Southside tonight at 7:45 p.m. at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena.
Norwich (19-3), playing in its seventh Section IV championship game under head coach Mark Abbott, vies for its fourth overall sectional title and first – and likely last – as a Class A school. Norwich drops back to Class B next year.
“The guys are excited and pumped, and we know we’ll have tremendous fan support,” Abbott said.
It’s no surprise the Tornado are in this game. From the start of the season, they were presaged as a contender, and remained about the top-20 ranked New York Class A teams most of the season.
“It’s always a goal to get where we are now,” Abbott said, whose club won a Class B section title in 2003, and is 3-3 overall in sectional finals. “It’s ironic that we didn’t play Elmira Southside for 23 years, now we’re playing them a second time in two weeks.”
Southside not an easy out for the Tornado at Jack Jones Gymnasium when the host Purple advanced in the STAC playoffs with a 66-55 win.
The game began with an ESS alley-oop dunk, and the visiting Green Hornets led by nine in the first quarter. Norwich tightened its defense and spread the floor on offense to open up its shooters. Josh Borfitz canned six three balls in the win en route to a season-high 22-point night.
“(Offensively), too many times early in the game we got congested in the paint, and that plays into their hands,” Abbott said. “No question we have to spread the floor and keep the ball moving.”
Defensively, the road to success begins with transition defense and rebounding. “They’ll run after makes, they’ll run after misses, and they’ll run after turnovers,” Abbott said. “We need to take that away from them. We did a decent job on the defensive boards against them the first time, and we’ve been a decent defensive rebounding team all season.”
Norwich can also count on its depth to make up for any scoring deficit among its five starters. Any one of six players have the ability to lead Norwich in scoring, and it was sixth-man Richie Bonney who led Norwich in a 70-41 playoff win over Elmira last weekend finishing with 15 points.
That playoff win, Abbott said after the game, was the best overall game his team played all season. Not a bad time to be playing your best. “This team has responded all year,” Abbott said. “Sure we’ve come up short a couple of times where we needed to make a couple plays, but this team usually finds a way to win.”