By VICTOR MENENDEZ
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — For the first time in nine years, the Fairport Red Raiders are sectional champions. A dominant 77-43 win over the Rush-Henrietta Royal Comets in the Class AAA sectional championship on Saturday at Blue Cross Arena at the Rochester War Memorial gave Fairport its first sectional title since 2017.
After falling behind 10-3 in the first quarter, Fairport closed out the first eight minutes of play on a 16-2 run thanks to six points from Tournament MVP Noah Meabon and two 3-pointers from Jon Roessel, taking a seven-point lead into the second frame that the Red Raiders never looked back on.
“Our mantra all year has been ‘trust us’,” Fairport head coach Scott Fitch said. “I’ve been really impressed with this group and how when we’ve been in tough positions we haven’t splintered at all. Usually when you get a competitive group, that translates to splintering. But this group doesn’t do that. We’ve been down a bunch of times, but our style takes people’s legs, so we know that in the third and fourth quarter, eventually we’re gonna wear them down.”
Fitch is in his 25th year coaching the Red Raiders, with this being his fourth sectional title (2017, 2006, 2007) He sees a lot of similarities between this team and the 2017 team that went all the way to the NYS Class AA championship.
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“There’s actually a lot of similarities; the competitiveness is there,” Fitch said. “It’s a group that doesn’t get phased, they kind of have a swagger about them. It doesn’t matter what situation we’re in. I think that group (2017) had that too. I also think we had great leadership on that team and I think we have that as well.”
This was also a bit of a revenge game for the Red Raiders as they fell to Rush-Henrietta in the Class AAA championship 53-50 last year.
“Us and Rush go back a long way,” Fitch said. “I coached against Calvin [Betts] (Rush-Henrietta head coach) when he was playing so it was nice to pay back last year a little bit. Huge respect to them, but to do it against a rival makes it special as well.”
After four straight buckets brought the Royal Comets within two early in the second quarter, but Fairport again closed the quarter strong. The Red Raiders went on an 18-2 run capped off by two powerful dunks from Meabon, who scored 12 points in the frame, to put Fairport up 18 going into the locker room.
“I got pushed the play before so I was a little angry, I had to get them back,” Meabon said. “When you get pushed like that in sports, you always want to come back and get the next play, so they gave it to me the next two times and I’m grateful they did.”
Fairport stayed firmly in control in the third frame, winning the quarter 20-10 thanks to 12 points from Alex Grejda, taking a commanding 28-point lead into the fourth.
The Red Raiders unloaded their bench midway through the final quarter as their lead ballooned to over 30 points.
Meabon finished with a game-high 21 points for Fairport. Grejda and Hadi Dergham also got into double figures for the Red Raiders with 19 and 13 points, respectively. Other scorers for Fairport included Ty Wheaton (3), Gannon Culver (6), Roessel (9), Ryan Fay (2), Luke Amarel (2) and Drew Gruba (2).
Kylan Burke led Rush-Henrietta with 14 points. Kingston Henry and Milan Griffiths added nine and eight points respectively for the Royal Comets. Other scorers for R-H included Tyrese Rudolph (1), Daniel James (2), Oliver Wright (1), Kaden Thwaits (3) and Aayush Bharati (5).
“We were inexperienced,” Betts said. “You hear that crowd, you hear that noise, you see this court, some of the calls might not go your way, you start missing some shots and as a young team a lot of that can get to you. Our biggest thing coming into this game was the emotion more than the actual game. We knew that it could get to us a little bit, which it kind of did. I take my hat off to Fairport. They’re a good team, but I told my guys ‘remember this. Feel how you feel, take it in, learn from it.’ We’ll be back in about a week or two in the gym working for next year.”
The Red Raiders (21-1) advance to the Class AAA Far West Regional where they’ll take on the back-to-back-to-back champion of Section VI Jamestown on Friday, March 13 at Buffalo State University. Tip-off is scheduled for 5:00 p.m.
Class AAA All-Tournament Team
James Willingham – UPREP
Kylan Burke – Rush-Henrietta
Kingston Henry – Rush-Henrietta
Hadi Dergham – Fairport
Jon Roessel – Fairport
Alex Grejda – Fairport
MVP Noah Meabon – Fairport
