Lattanzio's Layup, Free-Throws Win Close One for Hampton Bays Boys Basketball

Isaiah Lattanzio stepped to the free-throw line with 25 seconds left — the Hampton Bays boys basketball team down by one, 64-63. The junior forward took a deep breath, bent his knees and sank the first one, and did it again for what ended up being the game-winner in the Baymen’s 65-64 win over Sayville Friday.

“I felt really comfortable at the line,” Lattanzio said. “I knew they were big free-throws, and I knew I had to help my team win. We all work so hard every day and every game that I didn’t want to let my team down.”

He didn’t. Even with head coach Noah Brown calling timeout between his two makes to draw up a defensive stop.

“He has the heart of a warrior. I can’t say enough about him,” Brown said. “I was afraid I was icing him, but I knew he had them, and I wanted them to have a plan to press after he made it.”

Lattanzio, who finished with a double-double on 13 points and 10 rebounds, had actually come out of the game not much earlier. He twisted his ankle coming down from a huge layup that gave Hampton Bays (10-3 overall, 5-2 in League IV) a 63-62 lead with just over a minute left.

“We had come too far,” Lattanzio said. “We have gotten better every game, and we will keep on getting better. As long as we keep our mind on the prize — the playoffs — we will have a great year.”

The two teams battled to a 15-15 tie at the end of the first, and Hampton Bays held on to a 35-32 lead at halftime. Junior Pat Donahue (20 points, five rebounds) hit three three-pointers and came down with a fanfare dunk over that 16 minutes, totaling a team-high 16 points in the first half.

“I felt great tonight,” the small forward said, noting, though, that he and his teammates realized they needed to shift their game plan heading into the second half.

“I was seeing that the other team was really focused on me and Kazmin,” he said, “so I tried getting open the best I could, but realized that we had to use our other talented teammates to score.”

Junior James Powers (eight points) found senior Kazmin Pensa-Johnson (16 points, 10 rebounds) under the basket for a field goal and a 50-46 lead at the end of the third quarter. Senior Gianni Scotto (eight points) opened the fourth with a trifecta and Pensa-Johnson followed it up with a bucket for a 55-46 advantage.

“I really think our crowd cheering us on throughout the game motivated us to stay on our feet and keep the game alive,” Pensa-Johnson said. “We played very good team basketball and communicated well. We have all become way more confident in all of our games, so we all play perfectly together.”

He said that was true despite a nine-point run by Sayville that made it 59-57 with 3:28 left to play.

“We were not playing great defense and started to get a little tired,” Donahue said. “I think we should have stayed in a full-court press instead of changing to our 2-1-2 press during that time.”

“I think we had the wrong matchups in our man-to-man defense,” Pensa-Johnson added. “But we switched it up at the very end of the game.”

The senior drove the lane for a score out of the break, but a three-point play by the Golden Flashes (6-7, 5-3) gave them their first lead since the second quarter, out front 61-60. Both teams traded misses from the free-throw line before Lattanzio’s field goal. Sayville answered with 47 seconds left before fouling the forward for the Baymen’s last points.

“After he made the first one, and I saw how calm he still was, I knew he was making the second one,” Pensa-Johnson said. “I wasn’t worried after that. I just thought about how we had to get back on defense and fast if we wanted to win the game.”

Brown said though his team lost its composure during Sayville’s scoring spurt, he liked how his boys were able to regain their focus down the stretch.

“They started pressing us and we fell into their chaos, which you can’t do when you have a lead and you’re getting pressed,” the coach said. “But we showed that maturity and that composure afterward. It was a huge game, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m excited. I’m on cloud nine.”

The win will be important when it comes to playoff seeding, with six different teams atop League IV — including East Hampton, Mt. Sinai and Comsewogue — being a win or two apart.

What helps Hampton Bays is that each of its players, which have competed together since kindergarten, is a piece of the puzzle. Together, they could spell trouble for opponents.

“When we’ve got players hitting threes and driving and finishing around the basket and then we can change our defensive sets in-game it to adjust to another team, it makes it hard for them to adjust to us,” Lattanzio said. “It gives us the advantage and helps us get the ‘W.’”

“Sometimes you have to pick your poison against us, which is a nice thing to have as a coach,” Brown added.

Still, the coach stressed to his boys that because any team can beat another on any given day, there’s a one-game-at-a-time mentality, so the next will be Rocky Point (2-10, 2-5), which Hampton Bays hosts Wednesday, January 18, at 5:45 p.m.

“They beat us twice in the summer league,” Brown said of Rocky Point. “Summer league is summer league, but they beat us twice, and that’s all I can remember. I want us to focus on getting better every day. I tell these guys we’re a good team, but we want more than that — we want to be a great team. We want to earn playoff games and win playoff games and get to that next level.”