Bartlett’s Conrad Luczynski was already dangerous in the post with his right hand.
As the season has progressed, so has his use of his left hand, which has made him even more lethal.
“I decided to work on my left also ever since the start of the season,” Luczynski said. “I’ve been getting better at it. It’s hard for teams to guard me when I use two hands. I just feel where the defender is and go up right away. It’s also up to my team to give me good passes.”
The 7-foot-3 senior center had both hands working Friday as he led the Hawks to a 69-55 Upstate Eight Conference win over visiting East Aurora.
Luczynski scored 19 of the first 35 points for the Hawks (15-4, 8-1), who led East Aurora (10-5, 5-2) by as many as 23. He finished with a triple-double: 25 points, 16 rebounds and 10 blocks.
As is the case for most teams, the Tomcats’ plan was centered around Luczynski.
“The big fella is a big fella, man,” East Aurora coach Rick Robinson said. “There’s nothing you can say about that. The game plan was, once again, cut everybody else off and let him get his.
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“He’s a good passer, so that was the one thing we knew would happen. We had to contain everybody else because he will pass out of it. Conrad was killing us at first.”
Bartlett (13-3, 7-1) was up 22-17 when Luczynski got hot. He scored eight points during a 15-5 run, and Bartlett led 41-25 at halftime. The Hawks hit 16 for 27 shots from the field in the first half.
“We got some easy scores, and we hit a couple outside shots on top of it,” Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith said. “When we play like that offensively and defensively, we’re a hard team to play.
“I thought (East Aurora) had a good game plan. We just shot the ball well. They didn’t shoot the ball well. When you combine us shooting the ball well and them not, you get the deficit.”
Bartlett pushed the lead to 56-33 to start the fourth quarter. Julian Acosta wouldn’t let the Tomcats get blown out, however.
Acosta took over on both ends to spark a 14-0 run that cut the lead to 56-47 with 2:50 left. He scored six of his team-high 21 points in that run. He also had 10 rebounds.
“He was a major contributor to us getting back into it, but there’s no one man that’s going to get us back in it himself,” Robinson said. “It had to be a team effort. We had to do what we didn’t want to do, scrambling, but it kind of worked to our advantage. We were able to get back within nine.”
The Tomcats turned up the pressure, and Bartlett succumbed to it. The Hawks had 25 turnovers, including 11 in the fourth quarter.
“It was more of a hold-on than a put-away,” Wolfsmith said. “We want to learn how to put teams away instead of holding on to wins.”
Kelton McEwen added 19 points for Bartlett, and Ian Smith scored 15.
Luczynski was the star of the show once again, however, and Wolfsmith doesn’t get tired of watching it.
“It’s going to be a shame when he graduates because players like that, they come around once or twice,” Wolfsmith said. “I’ve had two of them: Kamil Janton and Conrad. You have to love guys that like to pass and can score too.”
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Paul Johnson is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.