PITTSFIELD, Mass. – Monument Mountain led wire-to-wire in Tuesday’s showdown between two of the top ranked teams in the commonwealth.
But the game was hanging in the balance with two minutes left and the Spartans up by seven.
That is when Griffin McElroy made the play of the game.
After a Sebastian Guete-Ramirez 3 ball from the left corner rimmed out, McElroy made the rebound and put up the shot in one motion to give Monument Mountain a 61-52 lead en route to a 67-54 win that kept the Spartans perfect on the season.
“I’m not a guy to get on the boards much,” the Monument Mountain junior said. “I don’t really have much hops. But I cut on that. My guy didn’t box me out.
“I felt like I was up there,” he added with a laugh. “I really wasn’t, though. But I put it back. And that was a big game changer. It was just fun to be out there.”
McElroy finished with 11 points and just three rebounds, including the night’s most important.
Khalil Carlson led Monument Mountain with 21 points and 15 boards. Manny Brown hit three 3-pointers and scored 15 points, and Guete-Ramirez scored 12.
The Thunder got 17 points and seven boards from Christian Maturevich. Jamal Sistrunk and Ceasar Santos added 14 and 10 points, respectively, and Kyle McGrath pulled down a game-high 17 rebounds.
All the starters for both teams had big moments in one of the biggest nights of high school hoops in the county this winter.
Monument Mountain improved to 14-0 with the win, which will only help its ranking in Division 4, where it was ranked third in the state coming in. Defending state champion Taconic (10-4) started Tuesday night ranked No. 1 in Massachusetts in Division 3.
The Spartans won despite being held under 70 for just the third time this winter.
In the first quarter, it looked like both teams would pass that threshold.
Brown hit a pair of 3-pointers, and Guete-Ramirez scored six points in the first eight minutes to help Monument Mountain take a 24-18 lead.
The pace slowed considerably after that, though Taconic did score 19 points in its comeback effort in the third.
“When the pace gets slower, you can see what happens to us,” Monument Mountain coach Randy Koldys said. “We didn’t handle it as well as we should have. Credit to those guys for slowing the pace down and picking up the defensive intensity.
“Our kids are gutty kids, man. They find ways to win and find ways to make baskets when we need ‘em.”
Meanwhile, Taconic found a way to slow down the Spartans and stay within striking distance.
“We were picking up full, we were pressing [in the first quarter], and our floor balance was not good,” Taconic coach Bill Heaphy said. “We had guys leaking out, and they were throwing over the top and getting some open looks in the corner and knocking down some shots.
“And they’ve got five capable shooters. So, we had to get out of that. That was one of the adjustments. We just went more man-to-man, half court.”
Early in the second quarter, Sistrunk knocked down a 3-pointer for Taconic to cut the Spartans’ lead to 26-23.
But Monument Mountain answered with a 12-2 run – nine of those points from Carlson, who put back a rebound to give his team a 38-25 lead.
“We just wanted to get the ball to him somehow, some way,” Koldys said. “So we did something we’ve never done before. We went to a five out, spread offense. We just wanted him to get downhill, and he got downhill a couple of times, and that’s what was really important – to make a big basket when we needed a big basket.”
Monument Mountain went to the locker room up by 13, but Taconic cut the margin to eight by the end of the third quarter behind six points from Santos and seven from Maturevich, who ended the quarter with an and-one off an offensive rebound to make it 54-46.
The fourth quarter started slow for both teams, but Taconic’s Martin Boua (six points, five rebounds) scored in the post with 3 minutes, 22 seconds on the clock to get the Thunder within seven at 59-52.
That set the stage for McElroy’s back-breaking putback.
“He’s not usually in the mix inside with the big guys,” Koldys said. “He likes his space outside here. But it’s all good.”
Moments later, Carlson drove the lane for a bucket to re-establish the double-digit lead. Guete-Ramirez and Brown combined to go 4-for-4 at the foul line in the last minute to keep the game out of reach.
Monument Mountain hosts Baystate Academy on Friday before getting a week off to prepare for Wahconah on Feb. 12.
Taconic, which was edged by rival Pittsfield the last time out, will look to get back in the win column on Friday when it travels to Agawam.
