The Southmoreland boys basketball team began its season with the annual Tip-Off Tournament at Mt. Pleasant High School. After a long four periods of back and forth scoring, the boys beat Mt. Pleasant by a score of 67-64. The Scotties then fell to Norwin the following night 68-37 as the Knights took the tournament championship.

“We have a lot to improve,” said senior starter Ronnie Robinson. “Coach (Frank Mucchino) got a chance to recognize in a real game scenario what we need to work on.”

Aside from the team finding the mistakes to work to work in for the rest of the season, the players also had a chance to recognize what they were doing that was not working.

“Defense wins games.” said sophomore Zach Cernuto. “If there’s one thing we learned, it’s that we need to improve on defense.”

The tournament may not have ended in a win, but the Scotties are optimistic for the rest of the season.

“It always feels good to beat our rivals,” said Robinson. “It was a really intense game.”

“It (tournament) didn’t end quite the way we wanted it to,” said junior Riley Comforti, who led the team with 21 points. “But the win against Mt. Pleasant was a good start to the season.”