DALTON, Mass. – The Taconic boys basketball team Friday used balanced scoring and aggressive defense that kept Wahconah off balance in a 63-35 win.
Jamal Sistrunk led four Thunder players in double figures with 14 points, and Kyle McGrath finished with 12 points, nine rebounds and a pair of blocks as Taconic won its fifth straight and improved to 9-2 this winter.
Taconic kept Wahconah off the scoreboard for more than three minutes to start the game and grabbed a 20-5 lead after one quarter.
In that quarter, the Thunder forced 12 turnovers en route to earning a 31-16 advantage in the turnover battle.
“Our defense needs to kind of ignite our offense,” Taconic coach Bill Heaphy said. “I didn’t want a half court game against their 2-3 zone and have to rely on outside shooting.
“But I did think we had a size advantage. So everything kind of worked out.”
Martin Boua scored 12 points and grabbed seven rebounds, and Ceasar Santos scored 13 in the win.
Santos scored seven and Boua had nine in the first quarter as Taconic pulled out to a lead it never relinquished.
Boua’s conventional three-point play with 5 minutes, 7 seconds left in the first quarter made it 14-0.
Pat McLaughlin finally got Wahconah on the board moments later.
And in the second quarter, Wahconah opened with a 9-0 run to trim the deficit down to six points.
First, Ryan Marauszwski knocked down a 3-pointer. Then, Jack Ducharme hit a 3. Finally, Aidan Hagmaier got a steal and went the other way for a basket, drew a foul and completed the three-point play to make it 20-14.
But that was as close as Wahconah got. Taconic finished the half on a 13-2 run to open a 17-point lead going to the locker room.
McGrath scored six points during that run, finishing the half with a shot from the elbow to make it 33-16.
Taconic added to its lead in the third quarter, and the fourth saw eight more Wahconah turnovers, including two of five steals for Christian Maturevich, who also finished with six points. Elijah Harewood scored four of his six points off the bench in the fourth.
Wahconah coach Dustin Belcher said Taconic’s defense was the key to the game.
“We struggled to score, and obviously [the defense] fueled them too,” Belcher said. “We couldn’t get going offensively. … But the credit goes to Taconic. They’re a good basketball team. They’re a heck of a lot better than we are right now.
“It’s a measuring stick, I suppose. But the message to the guys was: When you’re in that situation like we were in the first quarter, you’ve got to break the game down. You get overwhelmed if you look at where we’re at [on the scoreboard] right now. You’ve got to break it down into four-minute games. I thought we made a little bit of a push there, and I actually called timeout to say we had won that four minutes, to just kind of point out to them that you’ve got to take it that way.”
Sam McLaughlin led Wahconah with 12 points. Patrick McLaughlin scored nine after averaging 28 points
per game coming in.
“He was a big focal point for us,” Heaphy said. “We wanted to tag him each time down the floor. We put Christian on him, and Elijah guarded him. And we played a little bit of zone, too.
“The good part was, with our [forced] turnovers, he didn’t really get the ball over here to work, because we were able to cause some chaos. He’s a good player, though, and I was worried about him.”
Taconic goes to West Springfield on Tuesday.
Wahconah (5-5) hosts Agawam on Tuesday.
