Lenox Holds Off Monument Mountain for Road Win
LEE, Mass. – Aiden Delasco Tuesday scored 24 points to lead the Lenox Unified Basketball team to a 78-74 win over Monument Mountain/Lee.
Anna Litano scored 20 points, and Aubrey McDaniel added 14 for the Millionaires, who built a 10-2 lead early and were up by as many as 14 points in the third quarter before holding off the SpartanCats down the stretch.
Jake St. Peter scored 32 points, and Liam Wade added 24 for Monument Mountain, which scored the game’s last eight points but ran out of time in its comeback bid.
It was Senior Day for the Lee High seniors on the cooperative team, and Jacob Cooper and Sam Korte were recognized for their contributions as partners on the Unified squad.
Unified Sports is an initiative of Special Olympics that joins student-athletes with and without intellectual disabilities on the same teams.
On Tuesday afternoon, St. Peter and Wade put on a shooting clinic in front of a packed house that included a number of Lee’s varsity interscholastic teams – including its football team, itself a cooperative of Lenox Memorial and Lee High student-athletes.
Lenox’s Delasco, though, helped the visitors build a working margin in the opening minutes, scoring twice in a 10-2 run that ended with a bucket by Dionna Koenig (eight points).
Later in the first quarter, a 6-0 Lenox spurt that ended with a basket by McDaniel made it 18-6.
Monument Mountain pulled within four points early in the second quarter when Wade hit back-to-back buckets and Jaxson Choquette (six points) scored to make it 22-18.
And the SpartanCats tied the game late in the half when St. Peter scored in transition to make it 30-30 with about 2 minutes, 30 seconds left to play.
It was 32-32 after St. Peter scored with an assist from James Reilly (six points). But Lenox scored the last four points of the half, buckets from McDaniel and Gigi Gushard (four points) to give the Millionaires a 36-32 half-time lead.
In the third quarter, Lenox pulled ahead by as many as 10 on a basket by Litano, but Monument Mountain’s St. Peter put back an offensive rebound and scored in the post in a 6-0 spurt to get the margin back to four at 52-48.
Lenox used a 10-0 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters to build a double-digit lead.
Five different Millionaires scored during that stretch, which ended with a bucket by Koenig to make it 62-48.
Toward the end of the fourth, McDaniel scored three straight times as the teams traded baskets to make it 78-66, and it looked like Lenox would win going away.
But Wade made his 12th basket of the game, and St. Peter scored three straight times in transition, the last at the buzzer, to make it a four-point margin at the end.
Monument Mountain/Lee hosts Wahconah in Great Barrington next Wednesday. Lenox hosts Pittsfield on Wednesday.