Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2018: Phoenix earns triple-OT basketball victory

   Leading off today: We haven't even made it out of November yet and we have our first triple-overtime boys basketball game of the season.

   Senior Jack Allen lifted Phoenix to a 65-62 win against Oswego on Tuesday by scoring a game-high 35 points, including three clutch free throws late in the third overtime.

   Allen finished just short of his career high of 37 points last season vs. Solvay. Adam Hahn added 19 points in the win, and Michael Douglas of Oswego finished with 32 points in a losing effort.

   An Allen free throw late in the fourth quarter forced overtime.

   Fast start: Miles Brown, the reigning state Class C Player of the Year, scored 24 of his 38 points in the first half as Northstar Christian downed Corning 87-62. Brown added seven steals and seven rebounds to his effort.

   Northstar, a NYSPHSAA Class C finalist a year ago, was moved up to Class A for this season.

   Looking ahead: I've neglected to point you to the TullyRunners.com website ahead of the various championship cross country meets this month. Bill Meylan is always an excellent handicapper of team races, often adding insightful thoughts ahead of the big events.

   His latest bit of work of projecting the results of team races on Saturday at the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Ore. If he's right, the boys race could be a wild three-way slugfest.

   Check out his latest thoughts here.

   The 'social' scene: Are teens becoming more responsible in what they post on social media or are they simply being more savvy when it comes to hiding questionable content? The Journal News took a crack at answering that in a package of reports.

   "It's always going to be a work in progress, but I do think more kids are monitoring what's appropriate and what's not appropriate," said Yorktown High Principal Joseph DeGennaro. "I also think kids have become more sophisticated. They share a lot now in private groups that we publicly will never see."

   Documenting their bad behavior in private groups or via apps on which content purportedly quickly vanishes may be more discreet but isn't foolproof.

   "I don't think that high school students have the cognitive ability to always understand what they are posting is going to affect their life in the future," said professor Regina Luttrell, interim director of the Graduate Program in Public Relations at Syracuse University.

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   Said Pat Hale, founder of Social Media Athlete, a New Jersey consulting and marketing company: "It's the middle school level where we're seeing the horrors now. Five years ago, it was the high schools who had the sexting scandals and kids putting stupid things on social media. That has dwindled. It's gotten worse in middle school. The biggest scandals in the last year have been with seventh- and eighth-graders."

   Retired coach dies: Joe Bayno, who spent 15 years coaching basketball at Burke Catholic and 23 years coaching baseball at Valley Central, where he taught for 31 years before retiring in 1991, died Tuesday at the age of 84.

   "He just touched so many young athletes' lives and helped them become better athletes and better people," said son Bill Bayno, now an assistant with the Indiana Pacers. "I think any coach will tell you that's what's most rewarding about the profession."

   Strength in numbers: It's not unusual in high school sports for schools to combine teams in a sport, and hockey tens to be one where the practice is most common. Of the 12 teams in Section 2's Capital District High School Hockey League this season, five are merged teams:

   Niskayuna/Schenectady/Albany, Burnt Hills/Ballston Spa, GMSVS (Guilderland, Mohonasen, Schalmont, Voorheesville, Scotia-Glenville), Capital District (Shaker, Colonie, Columbia, Averill Park, Tamarac) and Adirondack (Glens Falls, South Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, Warrensburg).

   "Not as many kids are playing. Numbers are down for a variety of reasons," Niskayuna/Schenectady/Albany coach Sean O'Connell said. "When you look at it, it's a trend across the state. A lot of schools have had to pull together."