Thursday, October 1, 2026
East Meadow head coach Tom Rottkamp went to a ‘box-and-one’ defense in hopes of slowing down Farmingdale’s high-octane offense. By time the fourth quarter rolled around, the scheme worked to perfection.
Mazin Ibrahem scored seven of his 24 during the decisive final frame and fellow senior Will Casseus added 12, including two key 3-pointers late in the third quarter, as the Jets extended their winning streak to five by topping the Dalers 53-45 in a big Conference AAA-2 boys’ basketball matchup at Farmingdale last Friday evening.
Brendan Cronin hit the game-tying basket with 4:27 left and finished the game with nine points for East Meadow (8-3, 4-1 conference), which limited Farmingdale (8-3, 3-2) to just a single basket over the final nine minutes, 15 seconds. Four of the Jets’ wins during their run have come on the road.
“That was a great win for East Meadow basketball,” Rottkamp said.
Senior Jake Mangio, who became the seventh Daler in school history to reach 1,000 career points three days earlier, had nine points in the opening quarter but could only muster one third quarter free throw the rest of the way. His 23.8 scoring average entering the game placed him among the Long Island leaders.
“Just a stretch of not making shots,” Mangio lamented. “They did have a pretty good game plan coming in with locking me and then playing zone between the rest of the other players. We’ll be good. It’s just one loss.”
Erik Kubelka had a team-high 18 points for the Dalers, who had a three-game winning streak snapped.
The Jets’ defense that harassed Mangio involved one ‘chaser’ playing man-to-man defense while the other four defenders play zone in a ‘box’ formation. Ibrahem and Casseus shared the chaser role.
“We know all about [Mangio], we just weren’t sure how we were going to stop him,” Rottkamp said. “Obviously we didn’t early on, and, if you noticed, we played a box-and-one on him. We felt we had it in our back pocket if we felt we needed it and obviously we did.”
Farmingdale led 28-26 at halftime and went on 13-3 run to start the third to push the lead to 12 with 2:31 left. Ibrahem then hit a 3-pointer from the right arc, and after Farmingdale’s Andrew Dillon scored from down low, Casseus put on his mini show with a 3-pointer with 37 seconds left and a buzzer-beating shot from just inside the midcourt stripe that brought East Meadow to within 43-38.
“It was big,” Casseus said of the shot. “It picked up our energy.”
East Meadow scored the first nine points of the fourth, keyed by Ibrahem’s 3-pointer from the right corner 45 seconds into the session and two free throws from him that gave the Jets the lead for good at 45-43 with 3:36 remaining.
Farmingdale’s only basket in the fourth came on J.J. Collins’ drive with 2:45 left.
“They were just more tougher and physical than us, which was a little disappointing,” Farmingdale head coach Jim Pastier said. “The desperate team wanted it more and they were desperate at that point, and they rose to the occasion.”
