Calautti Dominant as Spartans Stop Hoosac Valley

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Dominic Calautti scored 21 points, grabbed 18 rebounds and blocked three shots Tuesday to lead the Monument Mountain boys basketball team to a 73-51 win over Hoosac Valley.

 

Calautti had a double-double at half-time with 17 points and 11 boards as the Spartans stormed out to a 42-28 lead at the break.

 

The win, Monument Mountain’s’ second straight, avenged a 62-61 loss at the hands of the Hurricanes in the Spartans’ season opener.

 

“It was in the back of our minds,” Calautti said of the revenge factor. “It has to be our mindset. We’ve got to go into these games as hard as we possibly can and share the ball.

 

“I feel like the beginning of the year, we needed to find an identity, and we found it these last two games.”

 

As Calautti noted, the Spartans’ newfound identity leans into the idea of making the extra pass.

 

“That’s one thing we’ve been preaching from the get-go: to be more of a team-type of attack on a fast break,” Monument Mountain coach Randy Koldys said. “And tonight it was really nice. It was pretty basketball when we made plays right there, really pretty basketball.

 

“Just filling lanes and hitting guys when they’re open makes things a lot easier for us.”

 

After going through the first half of the Berkshire County League’s double-round robin 0-5, Monument earned its first league win and improved to 4-5 overall at the midpoint of the regular season.

 

Sam Barcenas scored 18, and Finn Mason added 11 in the win.

 

Hoosac Valley got 16 points – 12 on 3-pointers – from Adan Wicks. Blake Mazzeo and Craig Field each scored 10. Qwanell Bradley, who scored 13 in the win over the Spartans in Cheshire, was unavailable for the rematch due to illness.

 

Calautti hit one of his two 3-pointers in a 9-2 spurt that opened a 17-6 lead in the first quarter.

 

The Spartans really started to pull away in the second, when Barcenas took over.

 

The Monument Mountain sophomore scored nine points and passed out two assists in a 13-3 run to open the period.

 

At one point in the quarter, four of five Spartan buckets came off assists, including two of their two of their four fast break points during that stretch.

 

Monument led by as many as 18 when Calautti scored in the post with 1 minute, 7 seconds left in the half. The Hurricanes were able to trim that margin down to 14 points at the break thanks to 3 from Mazzeo.

 

Hoosac Valley did its biggest damage with a 14-4 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters and ended with Wicks driving the left wing for a bucket to make it 57-51.

 

Koldys immediately called timeout with 5:35 left in what suddenly was a two-possession game.

 

“They’re typical Adams kids,” Koldys said. “They’re not going to give in. They’re not going to give up. They got down early and fought their way back to 57-51. They didn’t have one of their best players tonight. Give coach [Matt] Larabee a lot of credit for having his kids play as hard as they did for as long as they did.

 

“Ending the game on a 16-0 run is pretty nice, so we’ll take it.”

 

Larabee agreed that not having Bradley on the floor was a factor, especially when the Hurricanes could have used fresher legs to get that last six points to draw even down the stretch.

 

“It’s been our motto lately: We get down big, and then we make a big push in the second half,” Larabee said. “But we can’t sustain it, and it doesn’t last long. We need to do that the whole game. … Obviously, missing our leader tonight really hurt in all aspects of the game.

 

“We were beat [in the fourth quarter]. The first half was up and down, up and down, up and down, and we got nine guys on the bench, 10 guys on the bench. It’s tough. It wore us down.”

 

Monument Mountain’s Jackson Nelson hit a jumper from the left wing to stop Hoosac Valley’s run and start the 16-0 finish for the Spartans.

 

Calautti did not have a point during that stretch, but he did plenty of damage in the first three quarters.

 

“We feel like he is one of the best players in Western Mass, and we just want him to be that way every night,” Koldys said. “When he is, we’re that much better. Not only does he alter shots, he gets rebounds, finishes off plays and everything – culminated by the third-quarter dunk tonight, which is nice.

 

“We’re just feeling a lot better about ourselves tonight than we were two weeks ago.”

 

Monument Mountain gets a few days to practice to get ready for the Hoophall Classic on Saturday and Sunday. The Spartans will face Tuckahoe, N.Y., in the first round of their four-team tournament at Commerce at noon on Saturday.

 

Hoosac Valley (4-5) will try to snap a three-game skid on Friday when it hosts Wahconah.

 

Photos from this game to come.