With a 66-46 triumph at Walter Panas (8-4) on Jan. 19, Peekskill boys varsity basketball coach Lou Panzanaro became the all-time leader in wins in the history of Westchester County basketball.
His win total of 530 surpasses John Volpe’s 529, who coached at Gorton and Sacred Heart. Both Volpe and Panzanaro are in the New York State Hall of Fame.
However, while his team won and he broke a historic record, Panzanaro couldn’t fully enjoy his record setting night. That’s because he felt his team, while winning the game, didn’t play nearly as well as it should have.
That’s in large part because of the numerous unforced turnovers it committed, included 13 in the first half.
“If you break a record and you play well, you feel a lot better about it,” Panzanaro said. “We are not playing smart, fundamental basketball. It’s nice to break a record, but it’s nicer to see your team play well. A record is over the period of years but I have to worry about the present now and how we can get better as a basketball team.”
For a brief time Panzanaro, who has coached all 28 of his varsity campaigns in Peekskill (6-4), was able to look back fondly at all the good people that have helped him break the record, but it didn’t take him too long before his thoughts came back to the present.
“We’ve had a lot of good players, good teams and good assistant coaches over the years,” Panzanaro said. “That’s a nice achievement but it’s not the No. 1 priority. My No. 1 priority is to get this thing figured out so we can play our best basketball.”
Peekskill, despite its inconsistent play, did what it had to do to garner a 10-point lead at halftime, outscoring Panas in the first quarter 20-15 and 11-6 in the second quarter to take a 31-21 lead.
“I think Paul Garrett did play very well,” Panzanaro said. “He was very aggressive. He had seven points in the first quarter. He really got a lot of offensive rebounds, he kept the ball alive. He had 13 rebounds for the game. Nayge Wagner came off the bench and gave us a spark with six points in the second quarter.”
For the game, Wagner led Peekskill with 18 points while Jordan Clark contributed 13. Leading Walter Panas was Bobby Taub and Zac Preuss, who had 13 points a piece.
“I was attacking the basket, what I basically did was I went to the hole,” Preuss said. “I also went to the line a few times and made some free throws. Everything was working out good. My shot was on.”
But Panas just couldn’t get untracked as Peekskill outscored the Panthers 20-12 in the third quarter to increase its lead to 51-33.
“We didn’t come out scoring in the second half the way we would’ve liked to,” Preuss said. “Another big flaw was that our big man Brandon Lee, fouled out with three minutes to go in the third quarter.”
Preuss explained why losing Lee hurt Panas.
“We were a big body down, which hurt our rebounding,” Preuss said. “It was tough but we did what we could.”
( Reprinted from the Peekskill- Cortlandt Patch)