McGann-Mercy’s home opener went according to plan as they took down the visiting Southold Settlers, 49-40 in a hard-fought defensive battle Thursday night.
After Southold (1-1) jumped out to a quick start, burying threes at will thanks in large part to Pat McFarland, it looked like Monarchs had their work cut out for them.
“We were just missing layups,” Monarchs head coach Kevin O’Halloran said. “They weren’t even playing that good of defense, we were just missing shots.”
Southold’s assistant coach Lucas Grigonis loved the way his team came out of the gates.
“We were prepared early on,” Grigonis said. “Aggressive like we always are. We got away from that later in the game.”
After the first quarter, Southold held an 11-7 lead. All seven of the Monarchs points were scored by Joe Jeski as the rest of the team struggled to shoot.
A strong second quarter by the Monarchs offense, led by Nick Kneski brought Mercy (2-1) ahead at the half, 19-17. Kneski had nine points in the quarter.
“We have three solid players in Joe Jeski, Nick Kneski and Kevin Santacroce,” O’Halloran said. “We just need to get the rest of the team confidence.”
Jeski and Kneski kept the pressure on offensively and defensively to stay ahead, nullifying each run the Settlers began to put together.
Jeski finished with a game-high 19 points and Kneski wasn’t too far behind with 16 points.
McFarland led the Settlers with 14 points.
“We’ve just got to maintain that intensity throughout the game,” Grigonis said. “We’ll figure it out. I’d much rather take this loss at the beginning of the season than at the end.”
O’Halloran, though pretty upbeat with the victory emphasized the missed shots as a point to take away.
“We should have run right through them today,” O’Halloran said. “We need to get better at finishing.”
McGann-Mercy will host a non-league game against Lindenhurst tomorrow at 6:15 and Southold will travel to Stony Brook for a 4:30 p.m start on Tuesday.
SoutholdLOCAL photos by George Faella
