White Plains Blows Out Raiders

On Wednesday 1/29, the Scarsdale Raiders hosted the White Plains Tigers in a game that turned ugly late in the second quarter when the Tigers pounced on the Raiders scoring 13 points to Scarsdale’s 4. Junior Joey Katz shared his thoughts on the defeat: “I thought we had stretches where we played really well, but we couldn’t maintain that high level of play throughout the game.” At first, it looked like it would be a low scoring game, with only seven total points scored after three minutes. Then halfway through the first quarter,both offenses suddenly exploded. Scoring continued back and forth with the exception of a couple of mini runs by White Plains, which were both answered by the Raiders. Even with all the scoring, the only real highlight for the Raiders was Caleb Krohn’s four-point play that cut a 19-10 Tigers lead to 19-14. At the end of the first quarter, White Plains led 21-16. Krohn did most of the scoring for the Raiders in the first quarter, but other players made their fair share of contributions.

Expecting a high scoring affair for the rest of the game, the second quarter actually started slower than the first. Scarsdale trailed in quarter scoring 4-2 at the midway point, but White Plains came out of a timeout with a purpose and dominated for the rest of the half to take a 34-20 lead into the break. The Raiders defense performed much better than they did in the first quarter keeping White Plains to just 13 points, for the quarter. However, the Tigers’ defense was too much to handle and allowed the Raiders to score a mere four points, Neither team got to the line and neither team had any standout plays in the first half.  Katz thought, “we played really well in the first quarter, scoring 16 points. Then our offense slowed a little and we weren’t executing.”

Down 14, the Raiders came out with a new energy in the second half, and in less than two minutes they scored more pints than they had the entire second quarter with a three pointer and a jump shot. The Tigers called a timeout in order to regroup and didn’t allow Scarsdale to score for four minutes as they went on a dominating 12-0 run to extend their lead to 46-25. The run forced Scarsdale to call a timeout of its own, and they scored coming out of it to end the scoring drought. The Raiders and Tigers traded baskets for the rest of the third quarter, but White Plains outscored Scarsdale 20-13 to take a demanding 53-33 lead into the final quarter. Junior reserve Zack Shulman praised the now 12-1 Tigers, recognizing that they “had a few very dominant players and we had difficulty defending them.”

The 20-point lead didn’t slow down the Tigers. They opened the final quarter on a 10-0 run in just two minutes to expand the lead to thirty points and both coaches decided it was time to empty the benches. Even though they were down thirty, the Raider reserves played as if it was a zero-zero game. They showed heart and played with a ton of energy, demonstrating to the coach that they deserved more playing time. They outscored the White Plains reserves 14-6 in the final six-minute stretch of the game, but it was too little to late. The Tigers beat the Raiders by 22 points, 69-47.

With this loss, the Scarsdale Raiders have fallen to 3-10 for the season and have lost six straight games. Instead of taking the pessimistic route, Shulman and Katz both took an optimistic view, looking ahead to five winnable games that could turn their season around and earn the squad a playoff spot.Katz described the season as “somewhat disappointing in terms of wins and losses,” but thinks the Raiders could be a dangerous team come playoff time because of some of the good signs they showed during the season.