New Mission’s seniors deliver in clutch for title
LOWELL — In the era of winning a championship being the end all be all, there was a lot riding on Saturday afternoon’s Division 5 boys’ basketball state final for the seven New Mission seniors.
At a school in which basketball success has become second nature, this group faced the prospect of graduating without a trophy.
Locked in a tight contest against top-seeded Hoosac Valley, those seniors delivered in the final moments to give the second-seeded Titans a 57-49 victory at UMass Lowell’s Tsongas Center.
“It means everything. I’ve been here for four years, and we didn’t win a thing. Not a city, not a state — and we just won it all,” said Lawrence Davis, who put an emphatic finish on the victory with a dunk at the final horn to cap an 8point, 10-rebound performance.
His classmate, Jamari Toney-Simmons, scored 8 of his game-high 17 points in the fourth quarter and limited Hurricanes star forward Frank Field to just 6 in the final 26 minutes after he scored 9 of Hoosac’s first 19, helping the Hurricanes to an early 7-point lead.
“I saw him hit that three [early], and I knew if pressure wasn’t applied, he’d go off and it would be a back-and-forth game,” said ToneySimmons, who coach Eleazar Clayton called the best defender in the state. “If I shut him out, I believed in my teammates to shut the rest out.”
Said Clayton, “I told him to stop making excuses, the refs aren’t going to call it, you’ve just got to play through it . . . He went back out there in the second half, he didn’t make no excuses, fought through everything, and we’re here right now.
“He’s our defensive backbone. He takes the hardest matchup every single game.”
It was still tight throughout, with Qwanell Bradley (13 points, 8 rebounds) scoring on an offensive rebound with 46.2 seconds left to pull Hoosac Valley within 51-49.
But the Titans delivered in the clutch at both ends of the floor to secure their fifth state title, and first since 2016.
After the Hurricanes fouled at midcourt, Toney-Simmons immediately took the inbounds pass to the rim for a layup to push the lead back to 4.
Sophomore Solis Blue (12 points) then created a turnover in front of the Hoosac bench, saving the ball and starting the transition offense with senior Musa Fofana (12 points) finishing with a layup for a 55-49 lead with 16 seconds to play.
Davis, who battled through a sprained ankle, put the exclamation point on the state championship with a dunk in transition.