Hoosac Valley Boys Upset Drury in State Quarter-Finals
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Adan Wicks scored 38 points, and the eighth-seeded Hoosac Valley basketball team Saturday rallied from a nine-point first-half deficit to earn a 76-67 win over top-seeded Drury in the Division 5 State Quarter-Finals.
The Hurricanes survived a back-and-forth second half that saw 11 lead changes and earned their first win in three tries this season against their North County rivals.
Wicks exploded for all 21 of his team’s points in the third quarter and knocked down nine 3-pointers in the win.
He also played the facilitator in the fourth quarter, when Qwanell Bradley scored nine of his 12 points, and Blake Mazzeo scored seven of his nine to help the Hurricanes pull away in the closing moments.
“I just know that my guys are going to have my back,” said Wicks, one of two thousand-point scorers on the Hurricanes along with Bradley. “If I’m not going, everyone else is going to go. Feed the hot hand. That’s been our motto all season. I’m just so proud of everyone.”
Wicks went over his average of 22 points per game and Hoosac Valley (16-8) won its seventh straight.
This one sent the Hurricanes back to the state semi-finals for the first time since 2024. They move on to face fifth-seeded Roxbury Prep, a 62-55 winner over David Prouty on Saturday, on a date and at a location to be announced.
Jorge Bond scored 28 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for Drury, which got 13 points from Shane Faucher.
Hoosac Valley’s Terrell Johnson scored nine, but did most of his damage elsewhere, blocking a pair of shots, pulling down 16 rebounds and drawing a key charge in the fourth quarter.
“Our role players, Blake [Mazzeo] and Q [Bradley] have been fantastic all year, scoring points when they need to,” Hoosac Valley coach Matt Larabee said. “Terrell [Johnson] has been the unsung hero for us all year. He defended [Connor Hinkell], shut him down.
“He held their senior to six points. Huge. Fantastic, right? That was his goal. That was our goal for him coming in, and he executed perfectly, flawless.”
Early on, Bond, Drury’s 1,000-point scorer, helped the Blue Devils control the game.
He scored 16 points in the first half, and his transition bucket midway through the second quarter gave the Blue Devils the game’s biggest lead for either team, 26-17.
But Hoosac Valley answered with a basket by Craig Field assisted by Johnson and a Bradley drive on the right wing to quickly knock that margin down to five.
Again, Bond had the answer, scoring four in a row. But the Hurricanes closed the half on an 8-2 run that ended on Jayden Tatro’s off-balance 3-pointer off the glass at the buzzer to send Hoosac Valley to the locker room down, 34-32.
The third quarter was the Adan Wicks show.
The Hoosac Valley senior had five 3-pointers and scored 21 points to match the Blue Devils, who got 11 more from Bond in the period.
“He’s the key to our offense,” Larabee said of Wicks. “You saw it the other day in the Ware game. He didn’t hit that first half, a tie game at half. What happened in the second half, he comes out and starts hitting, and we blow them out.
“When he’s on, we can beat anyone. We proved it today. We beat the No. 1 team in the state, right?”
But neither Wicks nor Bond was the offensive leader of his team in a fourth-quarter that kept the capacity crowd of nearly 700 in Bucky Bullett Gymnasium on their feet or the edges of their seats throughout.
Faucher scored six of Drury’s 12 fourth-quarter points, and Bradley, Mazzeo and Johnson accounted for Hoosac Valley’s 20.
The last tie came with just less than four minutes remaining when Bullett fed Hinkell for a bucket to make it 60-60.
At the other end, Johnson pulled down an offensive rebound and fed Bradley for a basket that gave Hoosac Valley the lead for good, 62-60, with about three minutes on the clock.
Drury’s ensuing possession ended when Johnson took a charge to get Hoosac Valley the ball, and Mazzeo sank a 3-pointer at the other end to open up a 65-60 lead.
After a timeout with 2 minutes, 26 seconds on the clock, Drury came up empty on another possession, and Johnson again hit the offensive glass to extend a Hurricane possession that ended with his bucket to give the visitors their largest lead of the game at 67-60.
Bond’s triple gave Drury some hope, but Bradley got to the line trying to put back one of his 10 rebounds and sank both free throws to make it 69-63 with 1:10 on the clock.
“I didn’t score 1,000 points off of nothing,” Bradley said with a smile. “I can score when I need to. But when you have Adan Wicks just lighting up the scoreboard like that, you’ve got to let the guy do his thing. You feed the hot hand, and you play your role.
“And I was more than willing to play my role if we’re going to hang some banners up.”
Drury made one more stand, getting two baskets from Faucher in the final minute to draw within two at 69-67, but Mazzeo hit a layup to get the margin back to four. And after two final Hoosac Valley stops, Bradley scored the game’s final points on a layup.
Drury coach Jack Racette said his team could not match Hoosac Valley’s physical play.
“It’s been a long, grindy season,” Racette said. “We had 11 days off [between winning a Western Mass final and opening the state tournament], and then we had two games that were pretty meaningless. And then you come into this.
“When we were in the [Berkshire County] North, and you’re playing Wahconah, Hoosac, Taconic and Pittsfield, I think we were understanding the physicality. We weren’t as physical as we needed to be tonight.”
In addition to the Western Mass Class C title, Drury comes out of the season with a Berkshire County League crown that it clinched with a win at Hoosac Valley – its fourth straight going into Saturday’s game. And that point was not lost on Wicks.
“I didn’t want my career to go out losing to them for the fifth time in a row, and it just feels great,” Wicks said.