RallyNorth.net

Fri, Jan 18, 2008 07:00 PM @ Beverly

Team	1	2	3	4	Final
Marblehead	10	11	16	20	57
Beverly	12	20	8	20	60

Beverly beats Marblehead in final minute

Saturday, January, 19 By Mike Grenier
Staff writer

The Beverly High boys basketball team would've been kicking itself if it lost to Marblehead last night. Instead, the Panthers may look back at this one as a turning point in the season.

In a game that might've been as wild as anything that's been seen in the Northeastern Conference so far this year, Beverly squandered a 14-point first half lead and trailed by nine in the fourth quarter, but the Panthers had all the right answers in the final minute and pulled out a 60-57 win.

"That's our best win of the year," said Beverly's Matt McQuaid, who had a big game with 12 points and a career-high nine rebounds as the Panthers won their fourth straight to push their record to 6-4.

His teammate, Nate Knudson, wouldn't go quite that far but said, "It's the hardest game we've played, I know that. We have a lot of good players and we stuck together. We have good players on the bench and they came through tonight."

Knudson was referring in particular to sophomores Curtis Manuel and Ronnie Alford, who had career bests of 12 and 11 points, respectively. The great thing about them is that they didn't cave in under pressure, and Marblehead (7-3) is a team that knows how to create pressure and turn games around with its defense.

It came down to the final 60 seconds and that's when Matt Tobin, McQuaid and Knudson closed it out for Beverly.

Tobin (9 points) made a free throw with 47 seconds left to cut Beverly's deficit to 57-56. McQuaid tied it with a foul shot with 22 seconds left, then connected on two more free throws with 0:20 remaining to give the Panthers a 59-57 lead. Tobin played perfect defense to get a steal on an entry pass to Marblehead center Damola Abu (11 points, 13 rebounds) and Knudson put it away by making the back end of a two-shot foul with five seconds left, making it 60-57.

Marblehead, which outscored Beverly 28-8 in one fabulous second-half stretch to take a 49-40 lead early in the fourth quarter, uncharacteristically turned the ball over three times in the final 40 seconds. The Magicians finished with 17 turnovers, 13 of which came in the second half.

Junior point guard Pat Song tied Abu with 11 points for Marblehead. Tom Powers and Brandon Lee each had nine, Ian McKinley chipped in eight and sophomore Taariq Allen, who gave Marblehead its first lead (off a steal) at 41-40, finished with six points. But this was clearly an uphill battle for the Magicians, who trailed 32-18 late in the opening half.

"I was proud of the way our kids came back," said Marblehead coach Wayne Hanscom. "I felt our intensity level was down at the beginning of the game, but we got it back and started playing defense. We easily could've fallen apart when we were down 14. We had that nice spurt to take the lead, but Beverly's 3-pointers killed us. We got tired and made mistakes at the end. Beverly really earned this one."

After taking complete command for the bulk of the first half, Beverly proved vulnerable to Marblehead's scrambling, pressure defense. It took a while for the Panthers to figure it out.

"I think we finished the (first) half with six straight turnovers," said Beverly coach Scott Lewis. "They threw a 1-3-1 zone trap at us and we've seen it before. We knew what they were going to do, but we didn't do what we were supposed to do (against that defense). But we made some big threes down the stretch and caused some turnovers at the end.

"Alford did a terrific job off the bench and Manuel doesn't even know how good he is. This is a great win over an excellent Marblehead team."