TRI-COUNTY LEAGUE Balanced Sebring stops pesky Lisbon

Lisbon coach Joe Siefke said his team missed a golden opportunity.
By JOHN BUTERA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
LISBON -- To see how the Sebring High boys basketball team beat host Lisbon 55-48 on Friday, you need only look at the box score and listen to Trojans coach Brian Clark.
"We had five players that had a great game," Clark said.
UJoe James had 18 points and six rebounds.
UDan Scarpitti had 16 points, including the first nine of the game.
UMatt Ferguson had six rebounds, played outstanding defense and took two charges.
UDavid Scarpitti had 14 points, five rebounds, five assists and four steals.
UJoe Amabeli had seven points, eight rebounds and three steals.
Gap narrows
The Trojans (14-1, 9-1) needed all of that effort as Lisbon was within a point, 43-42, with six minutes left.
But Lisbon went more than four minutes without scoring as Sebring used an 8-0 run to pull away.
Lisbon enjoyed three first-period leads before Sebring found the range. The Trojans ran off nine straight points, including Dan Scarpitti's fourth 3-pointer, in building a 19-10 edge with 14 seconds left in the first session.
Scarpitti was actually 4-for-4 from 3-point range as the Trojans, who started the game 1-of-6, came back to cash in on six of their next seven.
Dave Scarpitti caught fire in the second quarter as Sebring took a 26-16 lead with 3:59 left. But Lisbon used a 12-4 run to close the halftime deficit to 30-28.
Second-half action
Lisbon (11-4, 7-3) had a poor start to the third quarter, committing four turnovers, two fouls and surrendering a third-chance basket in the first 1:32. James scored nine points as the Trojans took a 43-34 lead with 3:01 left.
But they were held scoreless the rest of the period as Lisbon pulled within three, 43-40, at the end of the quarter.
"The focus of their game plan coming in was to go inside to [Mike] McDevitt," said Clark.
McDevitt ended with 11 points and 11 rebounds.
"We came back good," said McDevitt. "And we knew we had to have this game if we wanted to win the TCL.
"But it seemed every time I caught the ball inside, I had two or three people on me."
Coach Joe Siefke said the Blue Devils missed an opportunity.
"We had the stage set," he said. "The best of the best were playing and we had them at our place. To Sebring's credit, they came in and took it away from us."