Fort Myers outmuscles Bishop Verot in rivalry game

Both the Fort Myers and Bishop Verot boys basketball teams will be No. 2 seeds in their respective district tournaments, playing semifinal games next week to extend their season for at least two more games.

The city rivalry game between the two schools almost serves as a dress rehearsal of sorts for the postseason. When you consider the atmosphere of a packed John J. Nevins Gymnasium at Verot, it trumps the pressure of a district tournament game.

“It’s a playoff atmosphere,” Verot coach Matt Herting said. “The kids love playing in it. And when you compare it to somewhere else, the district tournament doesn’t seem so bad. That’s why we play this game the last game of the year.”

Both teams were tested in a game where Fort Myers capitalized on its size in the paint and came away with a hard-fought 51-41 victory on Friday.

The Green Wave (14-11) faces South Fort Myers in the District 6A-11 semifinals on Wednesday while the Vikings (8-17) take on Oasis in District 4A-10.

Fort Myers coach Scott Guttery considers his team battle tested after it came away with its fourth straight victory in the series on the road in enemy territory.

“If you can handle the pressure of hearing all day at school from your classmates, ‘You better win. You better win,’” Guttery said. “And then there’s the fear of being made fun of by your friends who go to school (at Verot) if you lose. If you can execute your game plan in a loud environment with students chanting back and forth at each other, then you can execute it anywhere.”

The game plan Friday was for the Green Wave to exploit its size advantage. After a closely contested first quarter, 6-foot-4 Jarrett Bassett broke out for 13 of his 15 points in the first half, most of which came in the paint.

He and 6-foot-4 Connor Jenkins accounted for a 15-1 to start the second quarter. With the ball in the lane, Bassett found Jenkins, who had 13 points, on the wing for a 3-pointer that made it 25-11 with two minutes left in the half.

Verot, which has been without four potential starters for most of the season, never got closer than nine points the rest of the way.

“I said to the guys after the game that they beat Verot and that’s all that matters,” Guttery said. “That’s how we want to finish every regular season.”

Herting may have been disappointed in the outcome, but said the game where the Vikings held their own against a bigger, more physical team was a good confidence-builder heading into next week.

“Those guys are too big. Against them we’ve got to control the clock and hit shots on the perimeter,” Herting said. “If we hit some shots it would have been a whole different ballgame. We’ve improved so much this season though.”

Junior Ben Fullencamp led Verot with nine points while Austin Mosbach had seven in his first action since missing four games with an injury.