Wednesday, April 26, 2017: Elmira ND wins big Sec. 4 softball clash

   Leading off today: Mackenzie Maloney lined a 1-2 pitch over second base with no one out in the bottom of the seventh to knock in the winning run as Elmira Notre Dame earned a 5-4 softball victory over Elmira Heights Edison on Tuesday.

   Notre Dame is ranked first and Edison second in Class C in the season's first New York State Sportswriters Association softball rankings.

   Maloney, a three-time all-state pick, had tripled and singled earlier for Notre Dame, which improved to 12-0. Her freshman sister Peyton Maloney had tied the game with a sixth-inning single.

   Mackenzie Maloney had swung through a bunt attempt to ball behind 0-2 in the count before the game-ending heroics.

   "I just thought to myself, 'The first thing I see that I like, I'm going,'" Maloney told the Star-Gazette. "I felt good. I felt like nothing's getting past me now. I had my teammates behind me and I was just ready."

   The teams have a rematch Friday on Edison's home field.

   Marathon on the diamond: Jack Zielinski doubled home Connor Fitzsimmons and Nate Richardson as Pittsford Sutherland outlasted Canandaigua 5-3 in the completion of a baseball game that took 16 innings to complete over two days.

   The teams are scheduled to meet each other again on Wednesday.

   Matt Wang allowed a run and two hits in four innings to pick up the win in relief. Starter Max Carver had fanned 10 batters in 6 1/3 innings on Monday. Layton Cummings banged out four hits for the Knights.

   The game had been suspended Monday after the sides had each pushed across single runs in the eighth and 11th innings.

   Conner Fisher set a Canandaigua record with six hits in the contest, a rematch of the 2016 Section 5 Class A-1 final.

   Nassau clash: David Moyett scored three goals in Syosset's 7-4 victory over host Farmingdale in a Section 8 Class A boys lacrosse battle played in relentless rain.

   Syosset is ranked seventh and Farmingdale 13th in Class A this week by the NYSSWA. (Full rankings here.)

   Moyett staked Syosset to a 2-0 lead, then Liam Kalbacher added to the margin after a Danny Ochs (10 ground balls) trail check created a turnover. The lead was 4-1 at the half, and a Moyett assist made it 6-1.

   "We didn't take a lot of shots, but we capitalized on our opportunities," Moyett told Newsday. "Sometimes our best defense is goals on offense. We had some two- or three-minute possessions and we ended up scoring goals."

   Farmingdale goalie Brody Agres made 11 saves to help keep the contest close.

   Sec. 3 close call: Class D No. 1 Westhill kept its perfect record intact with an 11-10 boys lacrosse win over Skaneateles, ranked sixth.

   Owen Matukas had three goals and an assist and helped the Warriors rally from a 9-7 deficit. Fellow midfielder Andrew Hodgens also connected three times.

   Pat Hackler scored five times for the Lakers.

   More boys lacrosse: Lancaster pulled off an 8-7 upset of Hamburg, eighth-ranked in the state in Class B.

   "One of the bigger wins in Lancaster history," Legends coach Dave Mazur said after his team improved to 5-1. "I'm in my fourth year and I don't remember ever beating Hamburg."

   The teams last met in 2007 according to The Buffalo News.

   Junior Brett Beetow scored three times. C.J. Dirienzo and Ben Napieralski had two goals apiece, and Ben Mazur made 10 saves.

    • The second-year program at Thousand Islands won for the first time after 20 setbacks by edging Indian River 8-7. Riley Youngs scored three goals.

    • Whitney Point sophomore Andy Davis broke a Section 4 scoring record set exactly one year earlier when

he piled up 19 points in a 24-5 win over Oneonta. Davis scored eight goals and had 11 assists, to slide past the 18 points of Johnson City's Alex Sprague-Getsy in 2016.

   All of Davis' assists came in the first half as Whitney Point built a 17-4 lead.

    • Queensbury senior middie James Conway set a school record with nine goals in the Spartans' 25-2 win over South Glens Falls. Conway also assisted twice. The school mark of eight goals had stood since 2001.

   Girls lacrosse: Amanda Cramer, Annie Steigerwald and Kiera Shanley all had hat tricks for Fayetteville-Manlius in a 13-8 win vs. Cicero-North Syracuse. Gemma Addonizio chipped in with two goals and three assists.

   C-NS and F-M are each ranked No. 8 in the state, in Classes A and B respectively.

   Ryan lands in Nashville: Matt Ryan, granted his release from Notre Dame this spring, will continue his basketball career at Vanderbilt, the former Mr. New York Basketball announced on Twitter.

   The 6-foot-7 forward from Iona Prep will have two seasons of eligibility after sitting out the 2017-18 season.

   Ryan played 72 games with four starts in two seasons at Notre Dame but saw court time diminished as a sophomore.

Notre Dame, thank you for the memories. But it's time for a new opportunity, and that will be under Coach Drew at Vanderbilt University ??

— Matt Ryan (@Matt_Ryan04) April 26, 2017

   Speaking of basketball: One of the story lines of Central New York basketball next season at both the scholastic and collegiate levels will be the recruitment of Jamesville-DeWitt's Buddy Boeheim. The 6-foot-5 guard possesses Division I tools, and the question becomes whether that might mean he plays for his father at Syracuse.

   Boeheim, the second son of SU coach Jim Boeheim and his wife, Juli, was recently named the Central New York large-school player of the year by Syracuse.com after averaging 26.3 points and 9.8 rebounds for J-D.

   As the website points out, NCAA rules limit what Jim Boeheim can say while discussing his son's recruitment though he was able to watch him compete for Albany City Rocks over the weekend. From the story:

   "Jim Boeheim, the dad, said his son, 'played very well' over the weekend. Jim Boeheim, the coach, would not comment about his program's interest in Buddy Boeheim.'"

   By the way, the Orange are involved to varying degrees with several other City Rocks stars. including the Rochester trio of senior Nahziah Carter (Bishop Kearney), junior Jeenathan Williams (UPrep) and sophomore Isaiah Stewart (McQuaid).