By Ted Waddell
FALLSBURG — January 15, 2008 — It’s hard to win a game of basketball if you’re outscored in every quarter.
In Friday night’s non-league contest between the host Fallsburg Comets and the John S. Burke Catholic High School Eagles, the visitors outpaced the home team in each quarter (21-17, 20-10, 23-17 and 23-14) to record an 87-58 victory.
With the win, Burke improved to 6-3 overall and 3-1 in Division IV. Fallsburg fell to 3-8 overall and 0-3 in Division IV.
The only unfortunate aspect of the game for the Eagles occurred shortly before they took a 41-27 lead at halftime. Burke’s Derrick Stanton crashed to the floor in a melee under the Comets’ basket with 38 seconds remaining in the second quarter. He sustained an injury to his left ankle, possibly a fracture.
Fallsburg administrators and school resource police officers quickly called for an ambulance to take Stanton to the hospital for treatment.
Before being injured, Stanton had 16 points. He was one of four Eagles to score in double figures. D.J. Gibson led the way with a game-high 19 points, while Kareem Jacklin had 15 points and Jimmy LaFrance added 11 points.
Burke scored 27 of its points on nine successful 3-point shots.
Randy Gilmore and Darius Buckner paced the Fallsburg offense. Gilmore made a trio of 3-pointers and finished with 19 points. He scored 16 of those 19 points in the second half.
Buckner scored 18 points.
“You leave them open and they’ll knock down a ‘3’,” Fallsburg Coach Pete Dworetsky said of the Burke players. “We struggled on the offensive end to get a balanced scoring attack. We needed to run through the offense better, and Burke did a good job of doubling up on Randy Gilmore which created a lot of chaos for us.”
Dworetsky credited the efforts of Matt Seletsky and Sam Ingber with coming off the bench “to give us some quality minutes… they worked just as hard as my starters.”
Dworetsky also noted that Buckner and Gilmore “carried the load.”
In recent games, the Comets have been in a bit of a tailspin.
“We’re in a downhill skid, but they’re working hard and are far from quitting on me or each other,” Dworetsky commented.