Lincoln Park shakes off slow start, rolls to win over Niagara Falls in Burger King Classic

ERIE — Lincoln Park returned to this year’s Burger King Classic looking to defend its title after defeating Chicago's De La Salle in last year’s installment of the highly coveted four-team tonight.

The Leopards opened up night one of the 40th Burger King Classic with a dominant 70-56 victory over Niagara Falls Friday evening at Joann Mullen Gymnasium on the campus of Cathedral Prep.

Even though Lincoln Park came out on top with the 16-point victory over the Wolverines, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Leopards throughout the contest.

In the early stages of the first quarter, the Leopards struggled to get anything going offensively as Lincoln Park missed all of its shots from the field throughout the first four minutes of the first quarter.

After the dry spell in the early part of the first quarter, the Leopards began to find their footing towards the end of the first eight minutes of action, finishing with 12 points in the opening frame shooting the ball at just 35 percent clip from the field.

“We started slow because we prepared slow,” Lincoln Park head coach Mike Bariski said after the game. “Our warmups stunk, we were jogging through things and I don’t know if they [Lincoln Park] underestimated the speed and athleticism that Niagara Falls had, but they got a wakeup call real quick after going down 7-0 early on.”

“We have walked through the motions before when we start slow and finish fast and then do it again in the third quarter. But we did not do that today and once we turned it on, we were fine.”

After the slow start, Lincoln Park began to play to its strengths in the second quarter of play, which allowed the Leopards to open things up and create space.

Lincoln Park used its speed and athleticism throughout the remaining parts of the contest to space the floor in transition and capitalized in a big way converting 21 points off of turnovers throughout the game.

“We are a team that has to play fast,” Bariski said. “When we put a little heat on them [Niagara Falls] it sped them up and that's what got us going. Getting baskets in transition is our bread and butter as seventy percent of our baskets should come from play in transition. In a half-court offense that we play, we want to play downhill and play fast so playing in transition is a big thing for us.”

The Leopards play with several experienced guards on their roster who can knock down several shots from the outside on any given night. But as for Friday evening, that was a different story for Lincoln Park as it struggled to knock down the outside shot shooting the ball at just a 21 percent clip from beyond the arc.

But when the outside shooting struggled, the Leopards found bundles of success down low in the paint as Lincoln Park dominated the Wolverines with its size inside scoring 44 of its 70 points from the paint.

“We just finished really well at the basket,” Bariski said. “To begin the game we missed four or five layups but that was from a lack of concentration and a lack of effort. After that, we started to put more effort into it and we were able to get more finishes at the basket and get a few and ones.”

Meleek Thomas led the charge for the Leopards in Friday night’s matchup against Niagara Falls as he finished with a double-double on the evening pacing both sides in points with 20 and rebounds with 11.

Thomas used his large size to convert down low in the paint as the team struggled to hit shots from the outside.

“I got to the basket well tonight,” Thomas said following the game. “I knew that they were going to send two guys at me so I needed to push it down the floor so it could open more options because they would not know whether to guard me or my teammates. That opened up the middle of the lane and I was able to find different angles so tonight I felt like the paint was more on my side then my jumper wasn’t hitting as much.”

Even though the Leopards cruised to victory in the second half, Thomas was not satisfied with some of the effort shown on the defensive side of the floor which Lincoln Park will look to clean up as tomorrow night’s championship game is on the horizon.

“I think that we let up too many points and too many easy buckets in my opinion,” Thomas said. “If we were to just lock in and communicate better and if our defense showed more than our offense, this game would have been a completely different story.”

With the win this evening, Lincoln Park will now take on the winner of Cathedral Prep and Neumann Goretti tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. back at Joann Mullen Gymnasium.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Lincoln Park shakes off slow start, rolls to win over Niagara Falls in Burger King Classic