Longmeadow Boys Hold Off Taconic to Earn Win

PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- The Longmeadow boys basketball team Wednesday beat Taconic one point at a time.

 

The Lancers scored 22 points at the line and held off a furious Taconic comeback bid in the closing minutes to earn a 55-51 win in a rematch of last year’s Western Massachusetts Division 2 Championship Game.

 

“I just told them, ‘The game was won on the foul line,’ Taconic coach Bill Heaphy said. “They had 31 [shots]. We had eight. You can’t win those games.

 

“It causes a whole bunch of problems. It gets guys off the floor. It changes momentum. … And they’re a good foul shooting team. It’s just discipline at the defensive end that at times we lacked.”

 

Longmeadow’s Mike McLaughlin scored a game-high 14 points -- 12 at the line. And Will Hurwitz scored 13, including five from the charity stripe.

 

Taconic (8-5) got 12 points from Isaac Percy and 11 from Javier Osorio.

 

But Percy was unavailable down the stretch after fouling out with 4 minutes, 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter.

 

Despite his absence, Taconic rallied from a 53-45 deficit with less than two minutes on the clock to have a chance to tie the game late.

 

First, Jaydan Cross scored to make it a six-point game. Then, after Quintin Gittens got a defensive rebound for Taconic, Christian Womble (nine points) scored in transition to make it 53-49.

 

A Womble score and lay-up made it a two-point game with 26 seconds left.

 

Five seconds later, Longmeadow went to the line, but Hurwitz made just one of two. Gittens got the rebound, giving Taconic the ball down, 54-51.

 

But its shot rimmed out at the other end, and Nick Mishol got the rebound for the Lancers. He went to the line with 8 seconds left and made one of two to provide the final margin of victory.

 

Back in the first half, Taconic threatened to run away with it against the defending sectional champs.

 

Heaphy’s team forced turnovers on five of Longmeadow’s first six possessions en route to a 19-7 first-quarter lead.

 

But the Taconic coach knew that kind of defensive success was not going to last.

 

“They’re a good team,” Heaphy said. “They do a nice job handling pressure. I’ve seen them enough. Their personnel is good, and they’re well coached. I didn’t expect that was going to be the case the whole game, that we’d be able to turn them over like that.

 

“They made some adjustments. And then we started to pick up some fouls, and we had to change our rotations and put some different guys in, which isn’t always our pressing team.”

 

Longmeadow opened the second quarter with a 10-0 run to get right back in the game.

 

But Taconic answered, going ahead by seven when Osorio knocked down a 3-pointer at the buzzer to send his team to the locker room up, 29-22.

 

The second half did not start well for Longmeadow when starter Will Echeverria (nine points) departed after crashing into the wall behind the baseline in the first minute of the third quarter.

 

The Lancers shook off his injury and used an 11-0 run to take a 37-32 lead with about two minutes left in the third.

 

Taconic got within one possession a couple of times in the fourth but could never get over the hump.

 

Taconic is home on Friday night against rival Pittsfield.