High School Sports

Bristol starts quick, holds off Devils

BRISTOLVILLE -- Phil Aliberti is, if not perfect, a pretty darn good example of what Bristol boys basketball coach Craig Giesy wants from his Panthers.

Aliberti is unassuming as a physical presence at right around 6-feet tall. He isn't going to overload the scoresheet most nights with prolific numbers. Aliberti, however, is the perfect kind of Panther -- an unselfish, hard-nosed hustler, a blue-collar basketball player, if you will.

It was the example Aliberti and teammate Steve Burbach set, with what are best described as hustle plays, that led the Panthers to their best eight minutes of basketball during the fourth quarter as the Panthers held off visiting Lordstown, 68-47, in the Northeastern Athletic Conference season opener at Bristol on Friday night.

"Phil Aliberti and Stevie Burbach stayed grounded," Giesy said. "They made plays for us. Things weren't going where we didn't want them to go (because of them). Now that we have them making plays, we need to get them being more vocal in changing the direction for us."

After building a 21-point lead heading into halftime, the Panthers watched as Lordstown cut that lead to 10, 47-37, following Dakota Bingham's 3-pointer from the corner in the waning seconds of the third period.

"One of the primary things I believe in is we compete every day," Lordstown coach Brian Force said. "We proved that tonight. We're a blue-collar, hard-fighting basketball team. I know those guys in the locker room and they will play hard for me. We were slow and sluggish in the first half and you can't do that against Bristol."

Bristol never let the Red Devils get closer than 10 points in the final quarter.

"We kept our poise is the best way to put it," Giesy said. "In the fourth quarter, we did an excellent job executing our sets. We ran our plays and played fundamental basketball. We got good looks. In my opinion, though we forced all those turnovers and scored a lot of points in the first quarter, the fourth was our best quarter of basketball.

"In the fourth quarter, we settled down and played basketball the way we want to play."

Bryan Gabrielson tallied the first two buckets of the fourth quarter to push the Bristol advantage to 51-37 before another triple from the corner by Bingham cut it right back to 11, 51-40. Tommy Donadio answered with his own 3-pointer for Bristol and Aliberti added a bucket, but was unsuccessful at making it a three-point play to push the Panthers' lead to 56-40 with 3:40 remaining in the game.

Brennan Lickwar netted a bucket and Michon Peterson knocked down a 3-pointer to bring the Red Devils back to within 11, 56-45, with just under three minutes to go. Again, Donadio hit a 3-pointer and Gabrielson scored from the lane. After a Bingham tally with 2:04 to play, Bristol netted the final seven points to close out the win.

"We dug ourselves a 20-point hole," Force said. "It's hard to get over the top from there. We felt if we got it under 10 in the fourth, we had a good chance. We got it right to 10. They did a good job running and executing on their end. We'd get to 10 and they'd get us with a back-door layup or a 3-pointer from the wing. They hit a couple of big 3s down the stretch to get the lead back out there."

The Red Devils outscored Bristol, 19-8, in the third period to get back into the ballgame.

"We talked at the half about doing what you're coached to do," Force said. "We felt we were in the right spots to score early in the game and we weren't ready to do that. We were about a half a step too slow. We talked about catching it ready to score. Once the shots started to fall, that helped to get things going, too."

"A lot of that was (Lordstown)," Giesy said. "We played really good half-court defense in the second half. We had a couple of miscommunications, but they really hit some shots with hands in their faces. That's a credit to them."

The Panthers forced three turnovers in the first minute and led, 10-0, just 60 seconds into the contest behind 3-pointers from Donadio and Gabrielson and buckets from Gage Elza and Gabrielson.

"That was nice for us," Giesy said. "We were able to set the tone for how we want to play. We ran some guys in and out and we hit some 3s. Our pressure was relentless. That was exactly the start we want."

"It was the first game of the year, we were on the road and pressure bursts pipes," Force said. "They pressured us and we were loose with the basketball. There were three or four possessions they just took it right out of our hands. That's a credit to them. They were aggressive and we were passive. Bristol is a hard team to prepare for, maybe that's why we seem to play them better the second time."