CENTRAL NEW YORK – Though it wasn’t planned that way, each of the Baldwinsville basketball teams had what amounted to a mid-season break in the first full week of January. Every game scheduled that week – two for the boys, one for the girls which involved facing reigning sectional Class AAA champion Liverpool – was snowed out and moved to later in the season. Thus, when each of the Bees’ sides returned to action this week, it was their first games in 17 days – the boys since a Dec. 28 defeat to Watertown in the consolation game of the East Syracuse Minoa Holiday Tournament, the girls since falling to Columbia in the Dec. 29 Amsterdam Showcase. Such long breaks were challenging enough. The fact that they both had to face state-ranked sides from Cicero-North Syracuse only made it more so. The state Class AAA no. 17-ranked boys Northstars handled the Bees 89-52 on Tuesday night, steadily getting away as it led 42-22 by halftime and extending the margin to 66-33 by the end of the third period, B’ville only able to watch as the Northstars set a single-game school record sinking 19 3-pointers. Matt Pope paced the Bees earning 18 points, with M.J. Young earning 14 points, but no other B’ville player finished with more than four points. Nate Francis led C-NS with 25 points, with Andrew Benedict adding 17 points as the senior became just the second player in Northstars program history to reach 1,500 career points. A night later, the B’ville girls team ended its own 17-day hiatus with its own game against C-NS, and while it was far closer than the boys contest, it still resulted in a defeat for the Bees by a 56-45 margin. Both sides were state-ranked in Class AAA – B’ville at no. 21, C-NS at no. 16. Yet the Northstars had played three times in the new year and, more game-ready, limited the Bees to six points in the first quarter. Recovering to only trail 23-20 at halftime, the Bees picked up its production in the third quarter, only to have C-NS equal it and then pull clear in the homestretch behind 16 points from Meadow Werts and 15 points from Leah Benedict. Olivia Davis led B’ville, all of her 15 points coming from five successful 3-pointers. Maddy Polky contributed 12 points, with Beverly Marinelli earning nine points and Natalie Hollingshead getting seven points. What was impressive, from the girls Bees’ standpoint, was that just 24 hours later it turned things around with, arguably, its best win of the season, shutting down a strong Bishop Ludden side 55-43 on the Gaelic Knights’ home court. Winners of four in a row and sporting an 8-2 record, Ludden ran into a B’ville defense which held it to a season-low four points in the first quarter and then matched everything the Gaelic Knights produced the rest of the half. Up 32-19 at halftime, the Bees would maintain that margin most of the rest of the way, with Davis again notching 15 points from five 3-pointers as Hollingshead earned 12 points and Polky 11 points. Capri Hartman stepped up with eight points as B’ville overcame Ava Carpenter’s 14 points, five rebounds and six assists along with Abby Reynolds’ 10 points and 13 rebounds and Elizabeth Gaughan’s 16 rebounds. B’ville’s boys team would also recover with a victory, doing so Friday shutting down Auburn in the course of a 49-31 victory over the Maroons. All Auburn could get was two points in the first quarter and nine points by halftime. Production picked up from there, but the Bees rolled as Ben Leaton stepped up, matching Young’s 13 points as Pope got 12 points. Early next week the B’ville girls took its 8-4 record to Bishop Grimes’ Martin Luther King Jr. Tournament before a Thursday battle with Henninger as the boys Bees (3-7) are home to face Corcoran and Liverpool.