Amityville Proves Its Playoff Pedigree in Quarterfinal Victory Over Host East Hampton

After finishing the regular season 13-2 (15-5 overall) and on top of League IV, the East Hampton boys basketball team earned the second seed — and with it, a first-round bye and its first home playoff game since 2016 — in the Suffolk County Class A playoffs. Two victories and the Bonackers would find themselves in the county championship.

Standing in their way, though, was perennial playoff team Amityville, and the Warriors showed just how much sustained postseason appearances year after year can do for a program. The seventh-seeded Warriors defeated host East Hampton, 57-51, on Thursday, February 16, advancing to the county semifinals against third-seeded Mount Sinai, which was played Tuesday.

“They always compete,” East Hampton senior Jack Dickinson said of Amityville. “Across the board, they’re probably a couple steps quicker than all of us, so that made things difficult. They also play great individual man full-court defense, they’re athletic and they play tough. I mean, every time we got a rebound, they were right there trying to either swipe it away from us or take it from us.

“They’re also super well coached,” he continued. “They have a great coach who just picked up his 500th win this season. We knew they beat Kings Park twice — they’re just competitors. We knew it would be a tough game for them, with the big home crowd that we had, but we also knew it was going to be tough game for us.”

Dickinson was referring to Amityville head coach Jack Agostino who won his 500th career game on February 3 in a 57-53 victory at Elwood-John Glenn, the same team he picked up his first career victory against in 1987, according to Newsday. Since then, the New York State Basketball Hall of Famer has a 504-146 record and is the fourth boys basketball coach in Long Island history to reach 500 wins, joining East Hampton and Pierson legendary head coach Ed Petrie, who has the most victories of any coach (754), followed by Jeff Weiss (Lawrence Woodmere Academy, 625) and Ted Adams (Hempstead, 517). Agostino has won nine Long Island titles, four state public school championships and two state Federation titles.

Amityville, though, didn’t look like a playoff team for much of the regular season. In fact, after inexplicably losing a game, 37-31, on January 23 at East Islip, a team that finished 8-12 and out of the playoffs entirely, the Warriors won four games in a row to secure their playoff spot, including their second victory of the season over League III Champion and reigning county champion Kings Park in the regular season finale. They kept that momentum going with a hard-fought 56-53 victory over Hampton Bays in the opening round of the playoffs on February 13, leading into last week’s quarterfinal game at East Hampton.

The Bonackers last clinched a playoff spot during the shortened pandemic season of 2021, but never actually played a game after a positive case on their team ended their season, so when they took the court on Thursday night, they were playing in their first playoff game since the 2017-2018 season. And behind a large home crowd, they came out strong, getting a pair of three-pointers from junior Liam Fowkes and senior Luke Reese, ending the first quarter on a 5-0 run to lead, 18-14. But as Amityville shifted from a zone to man-to-man defense, it became a back and forth game through the second and third quarters.

Dickinson’s three with 5:15 remaining in the game tied things up at 40-40, but Amityville senior Tyler Hinton drained a three, junior Seville Williams scored on a layup, then Hinton hit another three, and about a minute after that, Williams sank a three of his own. And just like that the Warriors led, 51-44, with 2:39 left, forcing East Hampton head coach Dan White to call a timeout. But thanks to that scoring outburst by Hinton and Williams, the game was already out of reach, as the Warriors went on to victory.

White gave credit to Amityville, which he said had a number of players step up and hit big shots for them in the fourth quarter. Both Hinton and Williams were players who he said hadn’t shown a propensity to hit threes this season, but Williams led Amityville with 19 points, including nine in the fourth quarter, and Hinton made multiple threes in a game for the first time this season.

“Their leading scorer, Christian Smiley, was held to just one three all game,” White said. “I told the kids, and we prepped all week on this, the whole game was going to come down to how many turnovers we had, how many offensive boards they had and preventing them in getting out in transition. I didn’t think they killed us on the boards, and I thought we actually did a good job of preventing their transition. But we had 10 turnovers in the first half that weren’t forced.

“It’s a tough one to swallow,” he added. “They had players come up big in spots that they don’t normally, and that’s what the playoffs are all about, who can come up big in those times where you need them to.”

Reese finished with a team-high 13 points in his last game as a Bonacker. Fellow senior Finn Byrnes finished with 12 points before fouling out with 33.8 seconds to go. Dickinson scored 11 points and Fowkes finished with 10.

“Pregame with coach, he just said he’s super proud of this team,” Dickinson said. “Being that we’re all close with one another, he said we’re all going to look back at this game and wish we had given more so let it all out on the court. Although the outcome wasn’t what we wanted, we definitely gave 110 percent and gave it our all.

“It was super emotional at the end of the game because we realized that the 10 years or however long it’s been that we’ve been playing together for, it was our last time sharing the court together,” he added.

White said that in all of his years coaching, this may have been his most fun yet, and he is looking forward to next season where a large majority of the team is returning.

“In a weird way, this season has caused a lot of anxiety for me because of my desire to want to win with this group,” he said. “We had some close games against some great teams, and I just enjoyed every moment with them. I had zero school issues, zero camaraderie issues. We had a ton of dinners together. I didn’t have to motivate them in practice, they all motivated each other and themselves. It’s going to be really hard for me to ever have a team that was as much fun as this group.”