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Sports

Winter Preview: Raiders Boys Basketball

Team looking to secure a playoff spot in amongst stiff competition.

Last season, the Raiders battled to a .500 record in coach William Dortonne's first year as head coach. Despite losing a few key players to graduation, Dortonne is confident he's got a core group of players that will help the team advance further this season.

Record last year: 9-9

Head coach: William Dortonne (2nd year)

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Top players:

  • Matt Vogel, sophomore G
  • Severio Ford, senior F/G

Position breakdown:

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Guards: Severio Ford will be supplying a good amount of the offense this season for the Raiders. One of four senior starters, Ford will be looking to improve on a season where he was the team's second-leading scorer.

He'll get some help from Ahmad Williams, another senior, who's a versatile player that can fill a void at either guard or forward.

Forwards: Sophomore Matt Vogel has coach Dortonne excited about this season. Vogel, who according to his coach, "plays more like a senior than a sophomore" will be looked upon to provide Ford with some scoring help. He's another player who can play multiple positions if need be.

Ryan Halverson projects to be this team's utility guy. Playing the power forward position, the team will be looking for him to contribute in a number of ways. "We're looking for a little bit of everything from him," said Dortonne. "He's our four man, and does a lot of little things for us."

Center: In the middle stands 6-foot-6 center Sam Rozzi. The senior needs to be a defensive force of this team defensively if they are to have any success. If Rozzi can control the boards, things will be much easier for Dortonne & Co.

"We're looking for him defensively to create some havoc and rebounding-wise to be there at that aspect of the game," Dortonne said. "We're not looking for him to put up a lot of points, but we need him to be our backbone."

Key losses: In all, the Raiders graduated five seniors from last year's squad. The loss of Nick Sergio will undoubtedly hurt this team. Any time you lose your leading scorer to graduation, you've got to find ways to fill those holes. The others include John Gross, Chris Hansen, Brandon Sillaro and Al Contreras.

Expectations: Dortonne seemed concerned about the ability of his team to fill the holes left by last year's seniors. But he remained confident that though it may be a steep learning curve, his team will learn a lot this season.

"We lost a lot of guys, so there's a lot of new blood out there," said Dortonne. "Most of the teams we're going to be playing have guys that have a lot more varsity experience than us. So we're just looking to compete, put a product out there and give ourselves a chance."

Key games: "We're looking forward to every game," said Dortonne. "Teams are tough, so I think every game's a rivalry game. Brentwood's always tough, Longwood's always tough, Sachem's always tough. Even Ward Melville and Commack too. I can't really pinpoint a team who's a bigtime rival but we're looking forward to trying to compete with everybody."

But if you're an aspiring playoff team, every game is key like Dortonne said. Patchogue-Medford will have to battle for most of their wins, like they did a year ago. But here are a few games of interest:

Dec. 9: . The Raiders host the Phantoms (17-4 in 2010).

Dec. 21: At Sachem East. It's always an interesting battle when these two geographical neighbors tangle. This year will be no different.

Jan. 18: The Raiders will host Longwood, possibly the team's biggest rival.

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