Brown Wants Offense To Evolve After 0-3 Start for Baymen

When discussing his team for the upcoming season, Hampton Bays boys basketball head coach Noah Brown talked about how this may be the best shooting team he’s had since taking over the program six years ago. He did so with some trepidation, since he’s a self-proclaimed “old school” coach who hasn’t really bought in to the new school mentality that there’s no such thing as a bad shot.

After suffering three nonleague losses last week to start the season in which the team shot around 15 percent from three-point range, Brown is set to dial back the long-range shooting and go to his preferred mode of offense.

“I am not a huge three-point guy. I prefer working the ball inside, attacking the rim, using some backdoor cuts and getting to the foul line,” he explained. “A few years ago, we beat Wyandanch, who at the time was one of the hottest teams around, doing what I like to do, and we scored 70-something points, so you can win games by doing that stuff.”

Hampton Bays lost its season opener, 59-19, at Southold on December 2, a game in which the Baymen only trailed by nine at halftime before faltering in the second half. Hampton Bays then lost its fourth annual Arthur J. Jones Hampton Bays Boys Basketball Home Opener, 39-31, to Smithtown Christian on Thursday, December 4, before losing its third game in five days, 74-25, at Eastport-South Manor on Saturday.

Brown said he’s been implementing a diamond-and-one defense, using one of his best defenders, junior John Tedesco, on the opposing team’s best player and essentially making games almost more of a four-on-four nature. It worked for about a game and a half. Tedesco held Southold’s Kyan Olsen, who is expected to be one of the county’s leading scorers this season, to single digits in the first half of the season opener, and he only scored 12 points all game, which would typically be a solid defensive showing, but the offense sputtered in the second half of that game.

Tedesco has also provided the Baymen with the majority of their offense so far as well. It was his three at the start of the second half against Smithtown Christian that gave Hampton Bays its first lead, 18-16, since the start of the game. But a three-pointer by the Knights late in the third quarter tied the game, 25-25, and a jumper by Vaughn Beresford put them ahead by two heading into the fourth, where they increased that lead en route to the win.

“Credit to Smithtown Christian,” Brown explained. “They really upped the defensive pressure in the second half and moved to a more half-court defense than a half-court set, so we were struggling to get the ball down low so they almost forced us to shoot from the outside.”

The aforementioned Arthur J. Jones Hampton Bays Boys Basketball Home Opener began in 2022 and was created by Brown, Hampton Bays Superintendent Lars Clemensen and athletic director John Foster. Arthur Jones was a Hampton Bays High School graduate who died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After turning a successful high school basketball career into a scholarship to Hamilton College, where he continued to play until he graduated in 1986, Jones landed a job with Carr Futures in the World Trade Center.

Not long after his death, the Arthur J. Jones Scholarship Fund was established to honor him, and since 2002, more than $400,000 in scholarship money has been awarded to Hampton Bays graduates. To learn more about the AJJ Scholarship Fund and to support its work, visit ajjscholarshipfund.org.

Brown was excited for the coming week when his team has two games as opposed to three, which allows for a little more prep time. Hampton Bays hosted Shelter Island in another nonleague game on Wednesday and will play its League V opener at Sayville this Saturday, December 13, at noon.

“I like the spacing here a little more this week,” he said. “We get to practice, get our bearings, get some film in on Monday and Tuesday before playing Shelter Island. Then we get Thursday and Friday to prepare for Sayville on Saturday. I felt as if we were a bit sluggish at ESM with it being our third game of the week last week. We really need to rebound here this week.

“But I’m happy everyone’s healthy,” Brown added. “We have 10 kids so we’re not a deep team. So to be healthy three weeks in is good. Johnny Tedesco is playing really hard. Kyle Gorman always plays with a lot of heart, and he’s averaging two to three steals per game so far. Senior captain Julius Lattanzio, his motor never stops also, and he’s been a good vocal leader, so there is a lot of positive even though we’ve started 0-3.”