M-A rolls to another dominant win

He’s not wrong. M-A is closing in on a second straight undefeated PAL South campaign, but one of the teams within striking distance was Hillsdale, which had only one loss in league play and was riding a seven-game winning streak.

The Knights can be thankful they only had to face the Bears once this season as M-A used a suffocating defense and a non-stop offense to dispatch the Knights with ease, 71-41.

“They’re athletic, they’re long, they’re fast,” said Hillsdale head coach Brett Stevenson. “You’ve got to play a great game to beat M-A.”

M-A (9-0 PAL South, 18-3 overall) is a team in the truest sense of the word. There are at least six players who could go for 20 points on any given night, and yet the Bears do not boast any one star player.

“We have weapons everywhere,” Tripaldi said.

Ten players got in the scoring column for M-A, led Spencer Lin, who scored all 14 of his points in the first half. J.D. Carson added 11, knocking down three 3-pointers, while Skyler Thomas chipped in with 10 points.

“We’re just unselfish,” Tripaldi said. “We play for each other.”

And it’s not just the offense. The Bears dominated the boards against Hillsdale (7-2, 15-6), outrebounding the Knights 36-26 and held a 13-4 advantage on the offensive glass. The Bears half-court trap, coupled with high pressure in the half court, forced the Knights into 20 turnovers for the game.

All in all, it was another dominant performance from the PAL’s most dominant team.

“We came in ready to play,” said M-A head coach Mike Molieri. “We’ve been coasting in a lot of our games.”

The Bears may coast to the finish, but in the first half, at least, they are putting the pedal to the metal. They scored the first six points of the game on a Thomas pick-and-roll layup, an offensive rebound and putback, again by Thomas, and a baseline jumper from Trevor Wargo to lead 6-0 less than a minute-and-a-half into the game.

Shawn Cotton Jr., who finished with a game-high 16 points, did his best to keep Hillsdale close, scoring the Knights’ first two buckets on a pull-up jumper and layup off the dribble as Hillsdale trailed 8-4 with 3:45 left in the first.

But M-A responded with a 9-4 run, with Lin scoring the final six points run to open up a 17-7 lead after one quarter.

The teams traded 3-pointers to start the second quarter, with Cotton draining one for Hillsdale and Carson answering for M-A.

It was Carson’s 3 that got him going as he went on a personal 8-0 run — knocking down a pair of 3s and scoring a layup off a Hillsdale turnover.

Carson was lined up for another 3, but instead found Wargo at the left elbow for a 3 attempt of his. As soon as Carson made the pass, he started running the other way, signaling “3’ in the air.

Of course Wargo striped it to give M-A a 28-10 lead with 4:36 remaining in the first half.

Then it was Lin’s turn to take center stage again. He knocked down a 3 and then connected on 5 of 6 free throws. A jumper from Jeremiah Earby and a spinning jumper in the middle of the lane from A’Marion McCoy capped a 23-point quarter and gave the Bears a 40-15 lead at halftime.

And just in case you thought M-A would, maybe, come out slow to start the half — nope. the Bears opened the third on a 10-0 run, capped by a Tripaldi 3-pointer that put the Bears up 50-15 with 4:23 left in the quarter.

On a positive note for Hillsdale, Nick Robinson scored a pair of three-point plays in the third as he went on to finish with 10 second-half points.

M-A took a 57-23 lead into the fourth and turned the rest of the game over to the bench as Hillsdale would go on to out-score the Bears 18-14

M-A’s Ricky Martin, a 6-4 junior forward, scored 7 points in the final quarter, capping his night with a 3-pointer from the left corner.

“None of these team should be within 10 points of us,” Tripaldi said. “Other teams can’t keep up with us.”