NORWICH- At the end of the day, having the right experience matters and the Chenango Forks Blue Devils proved that on Tuesday night. The young Purple Tornado boys’ varsity basketball team suffered their fourth consecutive loss, to a much more senior-laden Blue Devils squad at Chenango Forks High School 61-55.

A closely contested first period left the host Blue Devils with a 11-10 lead as Norwich and Forks’ jockeyed for the lead. Then Blue Devil senior Jay Haqq scored 9 of his 11 first half points in the second period to extend Forks’ first halftime lead 35-25 over the Purple. Meanwhile the Blue Devil defense were able to limit the hot offensive start of Norwich junior Jerell Stokes-who scored 7 of the Purple’s 10 first quarter points, to just 3 points in the second stanza.

“(Chenango Forks) pressured us, they have great athletes and they were playing on their home court” said Norwich Head Coach Tom Collier.

The visiting Purple clawed their way back into the contest in the third period, many thanks to the hot hand of senior Keegan Franklin who scored 11 of his 16 total points in the penultimate quarter.

In the fourth period whenever Norwich got to within 4 points the Blue Devils found a way to get a series of defensive stops to keep the surging Tornado at bay and ultimately secure the victory.

Jerell Stokes led the Tornado in scoring with 17 points and Keegan Franklin pumped in 16 points to pace the Norwich offense. Jay Haqq and Eric Attleson scored a game high 18 and 17 points respectively to lead Forks in the scoring column on the evening.

“The kids are giving great effort, they play really hard. We make mistakes, and tonight we turned the ball over up top. We cannot turn the ball over. (Forks) had 12 or 16 points of breakaway layups” said Collier, adding “We have to learn how to win…We have to turn it around, and we have to start to do that Friday night.”

Norwich is back in action on Friday December 17 when they host the Windsor Black Knights at Norwich High School’s Jack Jones Gymnasium with game time slated for 7:30 p.m.

Score by Quarters

Norwich: 10 15 19 11- 55

Chen. Forks: 11 24 13 13 - 61

Norwich (1-4): Torin Lawrence 2, Jerell Stokes 17, Colin Olds 2, Steven Dowdall 9, Keegan Franklin 16, Logan Ford 7, Pierson Bookamer 2. 20 FG, 13-25 FT – 55

Chen. Forks (2-0) : E. Attleson 17, W. Paske 4, J. Haqq 18, A. Lavrinovich 2, G. Stack 6, T. Warpus 2, M. Thornton 5, L. Sickles 2, L. Carnegie 5. 23 FG, 13-29 FT- 61

3-point goals: Norwich 2 (Stokes 2); Chen. Forks 2 (Attleson, Thornton)