It’s been four years since the Chapel Field Lions have occupied the visitors’ locker room at SUNY Sullivan for the Section 9 boys’ basketball championship.

They lost that game to the Livingston Manor Wildcats.

They were the top seed in the last two Section 9 championship games and have won both. However, a return to the visitors’ locker room didn’t bode ill for the second-seeded Lions as they won their third street Section 9 Class D championship with a 54-42 win the top-seeded Mount Academy Eagles on Feb. 27.

“Third in a row feels amazing,” senior Mikey Bonagura said. “This one really means the most to us – for me and Jonah (McDuffie), coming in as seniors and leaders. Jonah’s always been a leader, but I’m a leader on this one, and it feels really good.”

Jonah McDuffie led the Lions with a game-high 20 points and had the ball in his hand when the final buzzer sounded. Looking like he was about to shoot the ball before time expired, he pulled it down and celebrated on the court with his teammates when the game ended.

“This one’s a shocker,” McDuffie said. “At the beginning of the season, we started off really rough. But we kept on preservering. We prepared for this moment. We worked out all the kins and worked on all the things we needed to work on, and this is it. It all showed tonight.”

McDuffie led three Lions players in double figures. Bonagura added 13 points and Luke Falkena added 10.

Dennis Hofer led the Eagles with 16 points for a team that struggled offensively for much of the game.

“They were having the season this year that we had last year,” Chapel Field coach Brad McDuffie. “They were beating some quality teams, and we had, by all accounts, a rebuilding year. We returned two seniors, and we really found our identity right about midway where we were like, ‘oh, we’re a defensive team.’”

Last year’s team was about the offense, but the Lions used their defense to beat the Eagles. They not only got scoring from Jonah McDuffie and Bonagura, but also rebounding from Falkena and Drew Hollo.

“We had a bunch of new guys in the beginning of the season, and they didn’t know their roles,” Jonah McDuffie said. “Sometimes, I didn’t know my role. We found our role, and we all played our role to the best of our ability.”

That didn’t mean the Eagles didn’t have a run in them. They gave a late gasp in the fourth quarter. The Lions led by 18 points with about five minutes to go in the game, but Hofer knocked down two straight 3-pointers to pull the Eagles to within 12 points.

After Falkena stopped the run with a layup, Bruce Maendel hit a 3-pointer to pull the Eagles to within 11 points. But the Lions didn’t let them get any closer than that.

“They’re a good team,” coach McDuffie said.

“We went to zone and then we went back into man. When we went into man, we closed the door on them, but they were getting open looks because we just don’t have the manpower to stay in man the whole game.

Our guys were exhausted.”

The Lions were defeated by the Section 11 champion Smithtown Christian on Monday at Center Moriches High School in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class D subregional.