PITTSFIELD, Mass. – Monument Mountain senior Khalil Carlson has scored way more points in a game than he did on Saturday afternoon.
He has made way more difficult shots than his final bucket in the pre-holiday matinee at Pittsfield HIgh.
But he may never have hit a bigger, more clutch shot in a Spartan uniform.
Carlson took a pass in the post from Manny Brown and made an uncontested lay-in as time expired to give Monument Mountain a 54-52 win in a showdown against its county rival.
The win was by far the closest of the season so far for the Spartans, who improved to 5-0 while dropping Pittsfield to 3-2.
“It was great, but I’ve got to credit Manny Brown with the pass,” Carlson said of the game-winner. “He set me up perfectly. I had the turnaround open. It was great.”
And it was the capper to a great show for the large crowd that turned out for the only Berkshire County basketball game on the schedule the day before Christmas Eve.
The Spartans not only remained one of two undefeated boys basketball teams in the county, they earned a measure of revenge against the Generals for a 68-58 Pittsfield win last January in Great Barrington.
“They’re a really tough team, and we just had to match each other’s energy,” Carlson said of Pittsfield. “They’re just a really good team, and we’ll see them again, I’m sure, in Western Mass.”
If that happens, it might be more the game that many were expecting from the Spartans and Generals, teams that came in averaging 83 points per game and 71 ppg, respectively.
For example, Carlson, who scored his 1,000th career point in the second game of his senior season, was just held to just two points in the first half. But he made up for it in the second half, adding 12 more, including the buzzer-beater to decide the game.
He and Brown tied for game-high honors with 12 points apiece. Griffin McElroy scored 12. Carlson also pulled down nine rebounds and had a couple of blocks.
Pittsfield’s Makai Shepardson led all scorers with 17 – 13 in the second half. Malachi Perry had a double-double with 14 points and 12 boards. And Nunu Brown finished with 12 points and eight rebounds for Pittsfield.
Carlson’s one first-half basket gave the Spartans a 14-7 lead late in the first quarter, which ended with them up by five. In the second quarter, Monument Mountain led by as many as eight points on a 3-pointer from Sebastian Guete-Ramirez to make it 24-16.
A bucket by Pittsfield’s Brown in transition with an assist from Shepardson eventually cut the margin to 24-22, but Isaiah Keefner and McElroy scored in the final minute of the half to send Monument Mountain into the locker room ahead, 28-22.
Despite holding the high-powered Spartans to just 28 points and Carlson to just two, Pittsfield coach Jerome Edgerton was anything but happy with his team’s performance in the first half.
“We were down by six, there was nothing to feel good about,” Edgerton said. “We had 22 points. They had 28. In my head, down six at any point of the game, it doesn’t matter if it’s the beginning or the end, something is wrong.
“I thought at half-time, we made adjustments and got out to a quick start in transition offense. I thought we made adjustments to take away the transition baskets. But there were just the broken plays, some 3s we gave up.
“Holding Khalil to two points in the first half is good. But we just didn’t finish the game out, so it doesn’t matter.”
The Generals jumped out on an 8-2 run to start the third quarter and tie the game in the first four minutes when Brown drove for a bucket to make it 30-30.
From there, the teams traded big plays on offense and defense, and neither led by more than six points.
That lead came when Carlson threw down the game’s only dunk to cap an 8-2 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters and gave the Spartans a 45-39 advantage.
Pittsfield immediately responded with a pair of baskets by Perry and a drive to the hoop by Shepardson to make it 45-45 with 4 minutes, 50 seconds remaining in the game.
“We needed something, we needed a spark,” Edgerton said of Shepardson’s big second half. “He had the matchup. With the matchup, he had to be aggressive to try to exploit it, try to get us back, try to get us something going.
“It just wasn’t good offensively today.”
After the Brown basket that tied the game, 30-30, it was tied four more times, but Pittsfield never was able to take a lead; in fact, it never led the entire afternoon.
But it did tie the game a final time with about 30 seconds left. Brown drove the lane and dished to an open Marcello Arienti, who finished to make it 52-52.
Monument Mountain coach Randy Koldys called timeout with 27 seconds left to try to get a final shot. When nothing materialized, he took another timeout with 5.1 seconds remaining and drew up the game-winner.
“We threw this play in last week, and we weren’t really sure about it,” Koldys said. “We just said, we’re going to try to figure out a way to isolate [Carlson] on the post. We had it set up on one side [of the court], and they put the ball on the other side, so we had to adapt a little bit on the run. And he did, and Manny [Brown] did.
“And Manny made a beautiful pass. In that situation, with five seconds to go, you might panic a little bit and throw up a shot. He didn’t. He took his time and then got the dime.
“It was an awesome job.”
Koldys called Saturday’s contest the toughest game his team has played. And, coming out on the winning side, it was easy for him to appreciate what a special day it was for Berkshire County basketball.
Included in that big crowd at PHS were several boys and girls basketball coaches as well as numerous star players from other teams around the area.
“It means everything, because what happens is, you want to be part of that,” Koldys said. “You don’t want to be the spectator. You want to be the participant.
“And it was awesome, really awesome. I can’t say enough about the crowd and the fun. It’s fun for them. It ain’t fun for me, I can tell you that.”
