Sherman head coach Cory Emory gestures during Friday’s CCAA Division 2 boys basketball game at Maple Grove. The Wildcats’ victory was the 400th of Emory’s coaching career. P-J photo by Scott Kindberg

Cory Emory’s earliest memory of Sherman Central School boys basketball was in the mid-1980s when Rich Crane, Greg Field and Randy Boland were pressing and running for Coach Frank Wasylink in front of standing-room-only home crowds.

Emory was a manager in those days, which allowed him a front-row seat at the heels of his heroes.

“That’s kind of how the pipeline goes,” Emory told The Post-Journal in 2014. “So many kids become managers, play in our Saturday morning youth program and then move on, eventually becoming referees or coaches for those little kids. It kind of keeps the cycle of excitement going on.”

Emory, a 1991 Sherman graduate and the Wildcats boys varsity head coach for the last 28 seasons, knows a thing or two about “moving on” and the “cycle of excitement.”

The most recent example came Friday night.

Behind 18 points from Jacob Ferranto and 12 from Nolan DeKoning, Sherman downed Maple Grove 44-36 in a Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Athletic Association Division 2 game on Dutch Hollow Road. More significantly, the victory was the 400th of Emory’s coaching career, which began in the 1997-98 campaign.

“It just means I’ve coached a long time and, actually, probably even more than coaching a long time, I’ve been blessed with a lot of good players,” Emory said after the game.

It was close throughout, but Logan Swan’s three-point play with 3:30 remaining put the Wildcats (8-7, 3-6) in front 38-33 and they held on for the win.

“We were struggling to find the hoop at the time,” Emory said. “It kind of gave us a little breathing room.”

Liam Colburn led the Red Dragons (1-12, 0-9) with 16 points.

SHERMAN (44)

DeKoning 4 0 12, Cook 3 2 9, Kopta 0 0 0, Chambers 0 0 0, Swan 3 1 7, Persons 0 0 0, Johnson 0 0 0, Ferranto 3 9 18. Totals 13 12 44.

MAPLE GROVE (36)

Culver 2 0 5, Lombardo 0 0 0, Mason 1 0 3, Verbosky 1 1 4, Yohe 0 0 0 , Colburn 6 3 16 , Cornell 0 0 0, Dahlberg 3 0 8. Totals 13 4 36.

3-point goals — DeKoning 4, Cook, Ferranto, Culver, Mason, Verbosky, Colburn, Dahlberg 2.

Sherman 12 14 9 9 — 44

Maple Grove 9 12 12 3 — 36