Frank Speziale Photo

NEW BERLIN – The annual Unadilla Valley Holiday tournament hosted two first round boys games Thursday afternoon with three teams hailing from the county.

The first game of the day was between the Bainbridge-Guilford Bobcats and the host Unadilla Valley Storm in which UV won 63-49.

Bainbridge-Guilford opened up the contest with the first bucket of the game but a nice pass from UV’s Andrew Jackson to a posted up Levi Rifanburg answered. And that’s how the first quarter went, closely contested by both teams until the Storm’s Dante Dye scored four straight points to give the host team a slight lead.

The Bobcats closed the gap down to one point before Jackson hit a corner three that led to first quarter ending 14-10 in favor of Unadilla Valley.

The officials called the game close, not allowing for much contact. That caused Bainbridge-Guilford’s big man Shawn Lindsey to exit the game with early foul trouble. Dye took advantage, driving the hoop and getting to the free-throw line on his way to scoring a first half 13 points.

Unadilla Valley went into the intermission with a slight 35-31 lead.

The Storm kept the lead to start the second half in large part to their full-court pressuring defense. UV’s head coach Matt Osborne switched up his defense at halftime to the full-court press, which caused the Bobcats to slightly panic and turn the ball over. The turnovers led to an early third quarter 8-0 run for the Storm.

But the Bobcats wouldn’t got down without a fight. Halaquist ended the run for UV with a pair of made free-throws. On the next possession, Halaquist sliced down the lane and finished at the rim. Bainbridge-Guilford scored another basket to go on a 6-1 run, getting the deficit back to seven.

Dye stopped the Bobcats run, hitting a shot from beyond the arc for the second time in the game and UV ended the third leading the Bobcats by double-digits.

The Storm extended their lead by quickly scoring on the opening possession and two additional buckets on back-to-back turnovers by the Bobcats.

Halaquist led all scorers with 24 points for Bainbridge-Guilford while teammates Xavier Cherniak, Tom Palmatier and Adam Ives all contributed six points each.

Dye finished with 20 points to lead UV in the scoring column. His colleague Levi Rifanburg had a quiet but powerful 16 points.

The Storm waited for the second boys game of the day to determined their opponent for the championship game. It was going to be Sherburne-Earlville or Vestal that would face the host team in Thursday’s final.

Nearly a minute of play went by before Vestal produced the first two buckets of the contest. Sherburne-Earlville’s Gabe Irwin answered. The Marauders and the Vestal Golden Bears played the rest of the game that closely reassembled a tennis match because of the many lead changes and baskets that answered on at the other end.

Back-and-forth the game went with the Golden Bears taking a five point lead after the first quarter but S-E closed that by winning the second quarter 17-12. At halftime, it seemed as if it was a brand new ball game as the score was 31-31.

But the alternating buckers halted in the third quarter. Vestal took a seven point lead into the final eight minutes of the contest. They grew that lead to 14 points during one stretch of the quarter.