Lansing, Newfield boys win IAC divisional titles

The regular season has come to a close for Interscholastic Athletic Conference (IAC) basketball, and there were quite a few teams in Tompkins County that impressed in league play over the past few months.

Lansing boys basketball’s season has been filled with ups and downs, to say the least. After firing out of the gates with a 9-0 start, the Bobcats then hit a rough patch with four losses in their next five games. However, they finished out the regular season strong, going 3-1 and clinching the IAC North Large Division title. Head coach Joey Volpicelli said it took a total team effort to top a competitive division.

“Together, we kind of hung in there, and we went through a little lull losing a few games, but we just kind of kept grinding and kept going,” Volpicelli said. “We had some guys that hadn’t played all that much this year start to step up and start to feel more comfortable when their number was called, and we got it done.”

Certain players have had to step up because of an injury to Alex Girich earlier this month that prematurely ended his stellar season. The junior forward was a massive presence down low for the Bobcats—both figuratively and literally—averaging a team-high nine rebounds per game while adding seven points per game. Despite losing Girich for sectionals, Volpicelli has had to make some tweaks to his game plan.

“You like to stay with what you’re familiar with, but personnel doesn’t always allow you to do that,” Volpicelli said. “When Chase [Sneddon] is in, we run things very similar to what Alex was in because it’s the same type of player [and] same position. But when you have Jordan [Sidle] and Ryan [Pettograsso-Houk] in, we’re smaller, we’re more guard oriented, we’re able to maybe spread the floor out a little bit more. We’ve had to adjust. I’m a coach that likes to keep things the same, but we have made some adjustments. It’s hard not to.”

Sidle got the starting gig for the IAC Large School Championship game against Waverly on Feb. 17, and he did not disappoint. The sophomore scored a team-high of 19 points, but the Bobcats fell 61-50 and were outmatched by Joey Tomasso’s 49 points, which set the single-game program record for the Wolverines. Revenge will certainly be on the mind for Lansing on Feb. 24 when they travel to Waverly for the Section IV Class B quarterfinals, and Volpicelli knows it will be another tough ask in trying to limit Tomasso.

“There’s no stopping him,” Volpicelli said. “We got a couple ideas that we have to throw at them. Maybe if he gets 20 or 25 and we kind of hold everybody else down, that’ll give us our best shot. But I don’t think there’s any one thing specifically that you can do to stop him. You just kind of hope that maybe he’s got an off night, but he’s such a good player that there’s not a whole lot you can do.”

Lansing is not the only team in the county to take home a divisional title. Newfield boys basketball retained the IAC South Small Division despite the best efforts of Candor and Tioga. The defending Class C New York State champions have been near-unstoppable once again, with their only regular season defeat coming at the hands of Class A side Johnson City early on. 

Their chances of repeating this as state and sectional champions took a significant blow Jan. 31, as star guard Jalen Hardison suffered a season-ending injury. The reigning New York State Class C Player of the Year’s presence was sorely missed in the IAC Small School Championship game Feb. 16 against Moravia, as the Trojans were decimated 83-34, losing out on an IAC title against the Blue Devils for the second straight year. Ausitn Jenney was the lone bright spot for the Trojans, stepping up with a team-high 15 points. Newfield enters sectionals as the third seed in Class C and will host either Candor or Unatego/Franklin in the quarterfinals Feb. 24. Should the Trojans win that game, they could face Moravia in the semifinals at SUNY Cortland.

Dryden boys basketball also qualified for sectionals after going 12-7 in the regular season. This time around, it was not enough to top the IAC North Large Division, finishing just one game behind Lansing in league play. The seventh-seed Lions open up sectionals Feb. 24 as they head to second-seed Owego Free Academy in the Class B quarterfinals.

Groton was the only girls basketball team to make sectionals in Tompkins County, finishing 9-7. While that only garnered fourth place in an extremely competitive IAC North Small Division, the Indians broke a decade-long drought of missing out on sectionals. They enter as the tenth seed in Class C, meaning they’ll hit the road Feb. 22 to battle seventh-seed Delaware Academy.