Championship week: Saturday at Buffalo State

One of the best -- and busiest -- high school sports days had its share of great plays and moments as five sectional champions were determined at Buffalo State. The Yale Cup came away with three titles, but ironically one of them wasn't the league champion as McKinley edged Grover Cleveland in the A-1 title game.

I can't give the usual treatment to Saturday as I've done with the other days this week -- there's just too many games, too many plays, too many things starred in my notebook. Plus, we need save some surprises for our annual awards wrapup for championship week. But here are some thoughts, game-by-game:

Class B-2: City Honors seemed to get most of the rebounds late against Wilson, and it made a huge difference. Abram Miller was tough to handle in the middle, but Marcus Smith was extremely active and  did plenty of little things. On the other hand, the quickness of scorer Erik Prophet and lead guard  was very tough to handle. The team triumphed after enduring several injuries throughout the year, with four senior starters missing separate stretches; guard Byron Brown Jr. accepted his sectional championship patch in street clothes and with a boot on his foot due to a broken leg.

Class B-1: I don't think Olean played its best game, but a large part of that was because I think Akron did. The Tigers were never intimidated, whether it was taking the floor with a team considered to be a big favorite or entering the lane against 6-8 senior Jake Houseknecht. When Olean coach Jeff Anastasia reached Akron coach Justin Gerstung in the handshake line, he showered praise on Gerstung and it was well deserved. The Tigers' two buzzer-beaters at the end of the first and second quarters made up one of those moments that make Championship Week great every year.

Class A-2: East was impressive offensively, as it often is, behind Jamal Webb and inside-outside big men Brandon Hall and Damien Goodwin. But the Panthers' hard work on defense seemed to contribute to a poor shooting start for a Depew team which needs its threes to compete. The Wildcats never seemed to recover. This was no surprise, but Greg Osika played as hard as anyone all week.

Class A-1: McKinley's Mansa Habeeb was the best player on the floor, hitting several clutch shots. It was a tough one for Grover fans, as the Presidents couldn't convert several chances in the final moments. The game didn't live up to the pregame billing as far as quality of play (two Yale Cup teams play a 56-54 game?) and Grover took some air out of its balloon early with a lot of early fouls. What I wrote in my preview blog remains true: McKinley has thrived at Buffalo State while Grover hasn't.

Class AA: This is what it's like to be Niagara Falls boys basketball: Last year, you lose the sectional final and everyone is talking about it. This year, you win and everyone shrugs. Falls was beyond impressive at Buffalo State, leaving Sweet Home coach Paul Schintzius and Jamestown coach Ben Drake searching for adjectives and wondering if the Wolverines had any weaknesses. Here's a link to Saturday night's Section V finals -- Falls will take on either Rochester's East or Rush-Henrietta, a team that was frighteningly good when I saw them beat Frontier early on at the Cataract Classic. That game will be at Buffalo State at 6 p.m. Saturday and it should be a tremendous matchup.

** Poll check: Here's how big of an upset McKinley's win was for fans: 87.1 percent of 62 votes were for Grover. Among the other games, the bigger the voting margin, the smaller the scoring margin: Olean had 87.3 percent of the 55 voters and City Honors received 77.4 percent of 53 votes as both teams had close calls; Niagara Falls (73.4 percent of 79) and East (61 percent of 59) ended up engineering blowouts.

For more on Saturday's games, check out the live blog entries from Buffalo State and the stories in today's paper or at www.buffalonews.com/sports/highschool.

A great wrap to a great eight straight days of hoops is a few hours away: St. Joe's-Nichols in the Manhattan Cup (3 p.m. at Canisius College; the girls game is at 1).

---Keith McShea