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Sports

Home Not Sweet For Fitch In State Hoop Tourney

Falcons Play Hard But Lose 5th Straight CIAC First Round Game

The storyline resonates with a recurring theme for the Fitch High boys' basketball team.

The Falcons play well enough in the regular season to win a majority of their games and earn a first-round state tournament game. A visiting team sojourns from across the state and celebrates in Fitch's gym, ending the Falcons season in the CIAC first round.

It's happened in each of the five seasons that Fitch has made post-season in the last six years. Home game. First-round loss. The latest chapter Tuesday was 17th-seed Bristol Eastern 62, 16th-seed Fitch 53. Monotonously similar to last year. Number 17-seed Pomperaug 61, No. 16 Fitch 53.

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"It hurts to lose especially at home," Fitch coach Gary Ballestrini said. "In some years, we lost  one-pointers, in others we had tough draws against teams from tough conferences (Bassick-Bridgeport in '08-'09). But in some of them, we had chances to win."

The latest loss was frustrating considering that Fitch had beaten Bristol Eastern by six points at home in December. Upon closer inspection, though, the key player Tuesday, Bristol Eastern's Eli Rodriguez, who scored 31 points, did not play in the first matchup.

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The shooting guard hit a trio of fourth-quarter 3-pointers, turning a 43-40 Fitch lead with 6:43 left to play to 51-43 Bristol lead, keying a 11-0 run that turned around the game.

"They had the go-to guy that you need," Ballestrini said. "We've followed their boxscores and I've followed them on-line with the Bristol Press. We didn't have that guy all year that who you could put the ball in their hand and give you an important bucket and they did."

Fitch, which ends 12-10 overall, wasn't expecting a long Class L tourney run as the winner advanced to face No. 1 seed Northwest Catholic. But the Falcons were hoping to end their tourney slump against a beatable team. In that respect, it's a major disappointment, although Ballestrini can't fault the squad's effort.

"I'm real proud of our effort because we hadn't played with intensity down the stretch of the regular season," he said. "We came out and laid it on the line tonight. We gave 100 percent effort."

Fitch fell behind 8-0 but did not show any quit, rallying back to lead, 11-10, after one quarter. Forward Kwame Cole (team-high 17 points) attacked the rim for driving layups and reserve guard Joe Mannelli (9 points) showed a nice medium jumper to keep Fitch within, 24-21, at the half and up 41-40 after three quarters.

The Falcons received nice inside play periodically from Seamus Ward, Elijah Ryan and Kieron Smith off the bench. They seemed poised to take control of the game in the last six minutes until the 6-1 Rodriguez hit his only three treys in rapid succession to give Bristol (12-9) the edge.

"I had some defensive lapses," Ballestrini said. "We only played about seven players, so I think we got tired."

This was not Ballestrini's most talented team in his six years, which include five winning seasons, highlight by a 15-5 regular season mark in 2008-'09.

"This team got a lot out of his ability winning 12 games," Ballestrini said. "We had a lot of good athletes that gave everything they had, but we didn't have a go-to scoreror any size. We have three regulars coming back in Chad Graham, Chris Corum-Giles and Kieron Smith, but there is no size in school. Hopefully somebody will sprout or someone will move in. If not, we'll just have to go with what we have."

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