Story and photo gallery by CHRIS BROOKS, managing editor, wellsvillesports.com
HORNELL — So many memories have been made from within the gym’s walls in Hornell. So much history, chronicled across so much time. When voters irrefutably approved the school district’s $30.2 million Capital Project back in December of 2023, the end for this era of the Seneca Street Zoo began to draw near.
And with the way time works now-a-days, all the countless days, hours, minutes, seconds. Every single measurement of time spent on that hardwood in season and in the off-season, all zoomed by in a flash.
The calendar now landed on March 1, 2025. The clock, 7 p.m.
Curtain call time.
It was an emotional topic of discussion entering the night on Saturday that was brought up by longtime Red Raiders head coach Kirk Scholes, right before they graced the Zoo’s stage one last time against a team the basketball mastermind wanted since the very beginning.
A team they’ve shared an exorbitant amount of history with for so very long — their archrivals from the west, the Wellsville Lions.
After the Class B1 bracket was assembled, the stars in the Section V sky needed alignment. With Hornell waiting in the wings with a first-round bye as the No. 4 seed, a win for the No. 5 Lions over No. 12 Early College back on Wednesday was all it took.
The Red Raiders would indeed get their wish.
Blue Cross Arena started to come within view along the Class B1 autobahn, with the exit off the freeway towards the War Memorial coming faster than you think. With No. 1 World of Inquiry waiting on the other side in the Semifinal round next week, only one of them was going to see their journey continue.
With the way this historic rivalry has gone over the years, especially at this stage of the game, there was simply no doubting that the blood, the sweat, the tears, all of the overwhelming emotion that it bolsters, it was going to ring true again in front of a standing-room only crowd in the Maple City.
The game of basketball can be classified as a battle of wits, a game of runs, a contest of physical fortitude. For a while in the early stages, the final installment of Section V’s most storied rivalry this year had all of those elements in the midst of a back-and-forth spar in the first half. With the Lions making up an initial deficit entering the second quarter, the Red Raiders were frozen in their tracks, after Wellsville drew even with a momentous jaunt.
The Lions grasped the momentum, and now it was on Hornell to try and alter it any way they could.
After some adjustments, the ice began to unthaw. Rapidly.
In common athletic practice, they say it’s always difficult to best the same team three times in one season. But in Hornell’s case, they simply were just not going to let that happen. Especially if it was their final game inside their home confines for the foreseeable future.
The ice soon melted completely, and shortly after their application of heat, the modus operandi for their first half finish turned into an unremitting tsunami.
After being held off the scoreboard in the second quarter for well over five minutes, the Red Raiders unleashed a game-changing tidal wave against the Lions, finishing the first half just as strong as their carryover into the second half, where an overwhelming amount of pressure on defense on one end of the floor granted major success on the other, holding Wellsville at a near-standstill to saddle up and ride off into the sunset in front of their home fans with a punching of their tickets to the Class B1 Semifinals following a 59-40 victory over their longtime rivals.
“This was the last time we were going to play inside here. If history could have written itself, it was going to be a Wellsville-Hornell game. History just aligned perfectly to help make that happen,” Red Raiders coach Kirk Scholes said. “We came in defensively with our thoughts on two things: We wanted to stop them in transition, knowing we had to eliminate JJ (Howard) on lay-ups and (Trent) Green on dunks and lay-ups. We had to keep them in the half-court. Number two, we had to rebound the ball like crazy. They’re big, long, athletic, and in the first couple of games against them, we did not do a well-enough job with that. We were talking about rebounding all night. If we held them to one shot, we could give ourselves a chance.”
They gave themselves a chance and so much more. But that came after a tight battle through an opening eight minute session that was purely reminiscent of Wellsville-Hornell basketball that we’ve come to know over the years.
Both teams went on a back-and-forth exchange before some breathing room was garnered by the Red Raiders (14-7) off their three-point game — a mainstay throughout the entire contest, with PJ Picco and Demayne Dixon going back-to-back to pull ahead first and foremost.
The momentum was held by the Red Raiders with two more three-pointers being knocked down to extend their lead out to seven at the quarter’s conclusion. But the offense would remain idle across the next several minutes, as Wellsville then took charge of the hardwood themselves to open the second quarter, as they rode a 7-0 run off the capitalization of several second chance opportunities against the Hornell defense — one of them, a wide-open look inside the wing from Trent Green that leveled the playing surface past midway.
But just as Wellsville found a rhythm, the Red Raiders interrupted it with a mighty response expanding across the end of the first half and into the majority of the third quarter. When the numbers were all calculated, the hosts with “H-Town” on the front of their jerseys constructed a leviathan 18-4 run following an even 18-18 timeshare on the scoreboard, all generated by an exceptional three-point presence once again, with Wyatt Evingham going back-to-back to initially help pull Hornell ahead at the break with a 9-2 half-closing run.
Adversity was something that was on the minds of Scholes and the Red Raiders all week. Something they knew they had to overcome at some point.
“All week long, we talked about times where things aren’t going to go your way, and there’s going to be adversity to overcome,” he said. “We had to play through it. We were focused the whole week trying to understand that runs will be made and we might not be able to throw it into the ocean five, six minutes at a time. We had to grind and keep getting stops until that time came for it to break through. They stayed the course and got through that rough patch and got going.”
But that wasn’t all that was discussed in the locker room. Scholes also noted the importance of taking advantage of the opportunity immediately, using their halftime lead to try and create a stranglehold on the contest.
“We said at halftime, we were up seven,” he continued. “These first four minutes were going to be huge and if this game goes back to a two-point game, Wellsville was going to have all the momentum going down the stretch. We wanted to push this thing up to 10, 11 points and then the floodgates just opened for us. The guys gained a lot of confidence, they hit some big shots, we had a couple bench kids Marco (Picco) and Ben (Woolever) hit a couple threes. Demayne hit one while (Tyler) Vogel forced him to.”
And boy did they ever break it open.
In the second half, Hornell picked up where they left off from the end of the first, utilizing the outer perimeter one more time to deliver an early dagger, serving up back-to-back-to-back triples from Marco Picco, Demayne Dixon and Ben Woolever, pushing the advantage out to 16 — the largest lead at that juncture, just two minutes into the fourth quarter.
“It felt like Hornell really shot the ball well tonight, and credit to them for making those shots. I think getting the four-seed over us in the bracket, plus the home game in front of this crowd really helped them as well. We had some good looks ourselves, but we didn’t see very many of them fall, especially in the second half. Hornell also did a really good job of making us play uncomfortable. They really built off of that.” said Lions coach Tom Muska.
With the advantage in hand, the Red Raiders were able to punch down on the gas and coast straight towards the finish line to end the evening on the most positive notes of all, sending Wellsville home while advancing to the Semifinal round on Tuesday, where they will now square off with top-seeded World of Inquiry at Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigua at 6 p.m. for a chance to reach Blue Cross Arena and the Class B1 Finals next weekend.
The winner will face either No. 6 Mynderse or No. 2 Waterloo, who occupy the nightcap on the same night at the same venue, at 7:45 p.m.
“We know they’re very talented, super athletic, super talented and long just like Wellsville is,” Scholes said. “We’re going to have our work cut out for us, and we know we have to work. It starts with the defensive end of the floor. We have to get stops, and we are not as pretty and fancy, nor athletic as World of Inquiry is. But we’re in for another grind, taking it one possession at a time, one shot, one stop at a time.”
As for the scoring, that was powered by Wyatt Evingham, as he knocked down four of Hornell’s nine total three-pointers in the midst of a team-high 14-point performance. Following up in their balanced offensive output was PJ Picco, who concluded with 13 points. Demayne Dixon had 10 points, while Aaron McInerney totaled nine.
For the Lions, JJ Howard led the way with a team-high 14 points. Trent Green finished with 10 points, while Karson Grover had eight.
The 2024-25 campaign for Wellsville is now officially history, as they put a wrap on a season that saw them finish with a record of 14-8 overall. The team will bid farewell to four of their five starters when Graduation hits this upcoming June, as Howard, Grover, Ty Vogel and Aiden Cowburn all prepare to walk across the stage later on this year.
Looking back, Muska notes how dedicated to the game each of his four seniors were, especially No. 5 running the middle.
A kid that even his own kids have grown attached to since the beginning of his coaching journey a few short years ago.
“It never gets easier,” he said. “You end up spending more time with them over a few years than you do with a lot of your own family. And they’re great kids, so you love them. I’ve never coached a game without JJ before. If the squeaks of sneakers are played on TV in our house, whether it was men’s or women’s high school, or the NBA, my two and four-year old sons would yell “Go JJ” every time to every game. It’s going to be weird making a game-plan without having the best shot blocker Wellsville has ever had on the court.”
Muska continued on his seniors, saying that “We had the team around him. AJ is a dynamic player with the ball in his hands, we know how well Tyler scores the ball, and not ever enough gets said about Karson. He’s taken every star player on and always makes everyone around him even better each and every night. We are going to miss all four of those guys a lot.”
Wellsville 11 9 8 12 — 40
Hornell 16 11 13 19 — 59
WELLSVILLE: Aiden Cowburn 3 0-1 6, Karson Grover 2 4-5 8, JJ Howard 5 4-6 14, Trent Green 3 4-4 10, Derek Coleman 1 0-0 2. Totals: 14 12-16 40.
HORNELL: Wyatt Evingham 5 0-0 14, Demayne Dixon 4 0-0 10, Marco Picco 1 0-0 3, Austyn Gollnitz 3 1-1 7, PJ Picco 5 2-3 13, Aaron McInerney 3 2-2 9, Ben Woolever 1 0-0 3. Totals: 22 3-3 59.
3-point goals: Hornell 9 (Evingham 4, Dixon 2, M. Picco, P. Picco, McInerney).
Total Fouls: Wellsville 16, Hornell 16. Fouled out: None.
