The Allentown High School boys’ basketball team ran out of time in a recent setback to Hamilton High School West.
Allentown sliced major deficits but came up short in a 50-43 loss on Jan. 9 in Allentown.
The Redbirds trailed, 28-14, at halftime and were down by 15 points entering the fourth quarter. Allentown rallied with a 13-5 effort but was unable to score the victory when Hamilton West sank some late foul shots to ice the game.
Senior Robert Hynes led the Redbirds with 12 points, while senior Yeshua Powe produced 10 points. Sophomores RJ Weise scored eight points and Tim Mastromarino put in six points to contribute to Allentown’s offense.
Allentown coach Jay Graber and Powe were both pleased with how the Redbirds rallied.
“In the third and fourth quarter, we battled back,” Graber said. “We were down a lot, and we just got down too much. Our shots weren’t falling, and we weren’t getting back on defense enough, so we got down too much. But I loved how we battled back hard. We just couldn’t get to the finish.”
“I feel like we started playing together as a team,” Powe said. “I just think that we needed a little better effort and [to] lock down on defense a little bit more, and we’ll be good.”
The loss dropped the Redbirds to 2-6 on the season.
Graber and Powe touched on areas where Allentown needs to improve in order to crack the .500 mark.
“We have to really improve on moving the ball on offense,” Graber said. “We’re really stagnant on offense right now. And I think we need to play a lot tougher and with a lot more heart on defense.”
“We definitely need to improve on the defensive end,” Powe said. “We need to cut down on the turnovers, and we need to be cohesive.”
The Redbirds hosted West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North on Jan. 12 and traveled to The Pennington School on Jan. 13 and to Princeton High School on Jan. 16.
The Redbirds return home to play Ewing High School on Jan. 19 at 5:30 p.m.
