Taconic Pulls Away Late at Wahconah

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires.com Sports
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DALTON, Mass. – After 24 minutes on Tuesday night, not much separated the Taconic and Wahconah boys basketball teams.
 
The next five minutes made all the difference.
 
The Thunder mounted a 16-4 run to start the fourth quarter and open a 15-point lead en route to a 64-51 win.
 
Kyle McGrath scored 22 points, and Ceasar Santos added 18 for Taconic, which bounced back from its third loss of the season and improved to 7-1 in the Suburban North division to wrap up a league title.
 
McGrath scored 12 points in the decisive run, which ended with a 3-pointer with 3 minutes, 6 seconds on the clock to make it 56-41.
 
“I just thought we played with a little more force, a little more physicality, more purpose,” Taconic coach Bill Heaphy said. “And we’ve been talking about that because we’ve had lapses in previous games.
 
“So that’s what I saw, a little more attention to detail, and they played harder.”
 
Wahconah coach Dustin Belcher saw his team have trouble responding when Taconic turned up its defensive intensity down the stretch.
 
“I thought we were where we wanted to be, 28-25 [at half-time], try to keep the game in the 50s,” Belcher said. “We shot the 3 pretty well. We hit 10. That was keeping us in it.
 
“But at the end of the day, the pressure bothered us in the fourth quarter. They turned up the heat a little bit, and we didn’t have a great response.”
 
Jack DuCharme dropped in four of those 3-pointers on his way to a team-high 18 points for Wahconah. Aidan Hagmaier, Sam McLaughlin and Cooper Calvert each scored eight. 
 
Wahconah senior Anthony Molineaux, who got a rare start on Senior Night, took advantage by hitting a 3-pointer for Wahconah’s first points of the night. He was joined in pregame ceremonies by classmates Hagmaier, Landon Corcoroan and Logan Wood.
 
Molineaux’s triple stopped a 7-0 Taconic run to open the game.
 
From there, Wahconah matched the visitors until it got a 7-0 spurt of its own – four points from DuCharme and a Calvert 3-pointer – to tie it, 17-17, midway through the second quarter.
 
A Santos 3-pointer at the buzzer gave Taconic the 28-25 lead in the locker room, and Taconic quickly stretched its lead to eight points to start the second half.
 
But Wahconah again battled back, eventually tying it on a 3 from DuCharme to make it 35-35 with 1:42 left in the third.
 
But McGrath, who scored just six points in the first half, started to heat up from there.
 
He drove the right wing for an and-one to put Taconic up by three points and drove the baseline for a bucket with 50 seconds on the clock to make it 40-35.
 
“I thought we didn’t look to [McGrath] enough early on,” Heaphy said. “We needed to get him involved. When he’s involved, we’re a much better team. So that was big. And I thought we distributed the ball better, passed the ball a little bit better in sequences. We’re emphasizing that, too.”
 
McLaughlin answered with a basket for Wahconah to again make it a one-score game, setting the stage for McGrath and Taconic to put the game out of reach with its run to open the fourth.
 
Martin Boua led Taconic with eight rebounds. Nate Reynolds scored nine points on three 3-pointers. And Quentin Christopher had five assists, two blocks and six steals to go with his seven points.
 
“Taconic is a very good team, we know that,” Belcher said. “They’re likely to be the one or two seed in Western Mass. And, you know, for three quarters, we played with them.
 
“But it’s a four-quarter game.”
 
Wahconah (5-11) goes to Lenox on Saturday.
 
Taconic (13-3) is at Springfield Commerce on Thursday before closing the season at Monument Mountain on Monday.
 
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