Naples established itself as the team to beat in the American Schools in Italy League race with a weekend sweep of a strong American Overseas School of Rome team in Rome.

“They have some shooters,” Wildcats coach Richard Elliott said by cell phone as he rode the bus back to Naples after a 68-63 win Friday and and 64-49 victory Saturday.

“By the fourth quarter on Friday and on Saturday we got more pressure on them.”

As evidence of the stepped-up pressure, Elliott cited his team’s stifling of AOSR’s Ezio Belli. Belli, who made seven of his team’s 10 three-pointers on his way to 29 points Friday, scored one point Saturday.

“We were trying to hold the score down,” Elliott said.

“We opened with full-court pressure and diverted their attention from the goal to just getting the ball up the floor.”

Happily for Naples (4-0, 2-0 league), Vincent Feazell outscored Belli on Friday with a game-high 32 points. On Saturday, Dwayne Newbie led the Wildcats with 29.

“We adapted to them as we played,” Elliott said. “The key was holding the score down.”

In other games of note:

SHAPE 56, AFNORTH 25: On Saturday at Brunssum, Netherlands, Michael Konidaris scored a game-high 19 points, and Kelsey Bardell added 12 points and six rebounds as the Spartans (6-0) completed a home-and-home nonregional sweep.

Bardell burned AFNORTH for 32 points in Friday night’s 68-28 victory at SHAPE, which ended after three quarters because of the school system’s 39-point courtesy rule.

Ansbach 72, Vilseck 68: On Saturday at Ansbach, the Cougars unleashed a 41-point second half on Vilseck to erase a 38-31 halftime deficit.

Sam Freeman scored 18 points and pulled down 14 rebounds for Ansbach (6-0), which survived 27 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists from Josh Frank. Xavier Sheppard had nine steals for Ansbach.

Hanau 50, Hohenfels 39: On Saturday at Hanau, Emanuel Moore scored 23 points and hauled in 12 rebounds for the Panthers (5-0).

Moore was coming off a 27-point outburst in Friday’s 54-34 victory.

In addition to keeping pace atop Region III, Hanau joined idle Ramstein (5-0), SHAPE (6-0), Naples (4-0) and Ansbach (6-0) as the remaining unbeaten boys teams in Europe.

Kaiserslautern 60, Baumholder 52: On Friday at Kaiserslautern, the Division I Red Raiders rode 19 points from Marcos Velazquez, 12 by Josiah Baldwin and 10 by Edrick Scarvers to a victory over their D-III guests.

It was the second Region II victory without a loss for the Red Raiders (3-2). Baumholder (1-5), which won last year’s European D-II title, is 1-3 in Region II.

Wiesbaden 43, Mannheim 40: Visiting Wiesbaden, which got 13 points from Terrell Harper and 11 from Kiante Clifton, trailed for the first three quarters Friday before tying the game at 36 with three minutes to play.

Two Alan Gray free throws put Wiesbaden up 43-38 with 10 second to play.

Migrated