The New Hyde Park Memorial High School varsity boys basketball team fell to Garden City High School 47-35 on Tuesday night at New Hyde Park.
Falling behind by 10 points in the first half, the Gladiators were unable to make a comeback.
Garden City needs to win one of their next two games to make the playoffs. The Gladiators were eliminated from playoff contention prior to Tuesday night’s game.
Dan Bonchonsky led the Trojans (5-5) with 12 points and 12 rebounds, while John Tomasini scored 14 points as the leading scorer for New Hyde Park (2-9). Ed Blatz scored 11 points for New Hyde Park. The Gladiators had three 3-pointers, and the Trojans had two.
“I told my team that its very hard to chase in high school basketball, and that’s what we were doing tonight,” Gladiators head coach Don Rood said. “We fell down early, and it was a hard fought game for us.”
New Hyde Park came back from 10 points down to catch the Trojans several times during the game. But the Trojans consistently struck back.
“We were able to get those early points on the board, and we had terrific rebounding,” said Trojans head coach Larry Steimer.
Steimer also credited Mark DeSantis’ ball handling for the win.
The Gladiators have lost their last three games. Their last victory was a 56-50 win over Wantagh (5-5) on January 26.
As the sixth seed in Conference A-I, they will face Westbury (0-10) next on Friday.
The Trojans came off a 42-34 win over the Westbury last Friday, which followed their 62-57 loss to Mineola at the end of January.
