Woonsocket advances
WOONSOCKET- In a 32-minute high school basketball game, anything is possible. Overall records and previous headto-head encounters can prove to be entirely irrelevant if one team happens to be locked in on that particular night, while the other comes not fully prepared.
Woonsocket coach TJ Ciolfi stressed that message to his players headed into Friday night’s D-I Preliminary contest at home against Coventry, with several of his players already eyeing a quarterfinal showdown against rival Mt. Pleasant next week.
On paper, the fifth-seeded Villa Novans were heavy favorites against the No. 13 seed Oakers (5-13), but Ciolfi knew that they needed to show up and play their best nonetheless in order to advance.
“It’s tough to not look ahead when you’re 17 years old, but we try to tell them that you have to show up,” he said.
The gritty Oakers, minus two of their regular starters, contended with Woonsocket for the first half and most of the second one before the Novans managed to pull away down the stretch, closing the game on a 26-16 run en route to a 66-53 final.
Dwayne Robinson-O’Hagan scored a game-high 27 points, while Denzel Lyles added 13. Justo Colon and Jossue Hernandez also reached double figures with 11 and 10 points in the winning effort, helping their team to advance to the quarterfinals next week where they will take on the Kilties.
Ciolfi credited the Oakers, a team his club beat by just six points during the regular season, for battling hard throughout the night on Friday, but remained confident that the superior size and strength of the Novans would ultimately prevail in the end.
“Over time, we figured we’d be able to pull ahead and win the game,” he said.
Coventry, with five league wins to its name and next to nothing to lose, had the ability to spoil all Woonsocket had worked for up to this point with just a single victory, a reality Ciolfi was well aware of.
“It’s Division I. You never know, Troy could go for 30,” he said referring to the Oakers’ leading scorer Troy Osterhout, who wound up leading the way for the visitors with 15.
The Novans led just 30-29 at the break and 48-43 with 5:16 remaining before they began to pull away for good. Consecutive buckets from O’Hagan coupled by a baseline 3-pointer by Lyles highlighted a 9-0 run to make it 57-43. Coventry’s Jayden Voelker pulled the visitors to within a dozen points at 59-47 on a late bucket as part of a six-point performance by the sophomore, but Colon responded with a 3-pointer from the top of the key a short time later.
Now, Woonsocket can turn its full attention towards a quarterfinal showdown with the Kilties, set for Tuesday night in Providence at 6.
“I think my guys have been on to Mt. Pleasant since like Tuesday,” Ciolfi said. “We’ll be ready to play. We play them twice a year, a couple of years ago we played them in the playoffs down there, so we’re familiar with each other.”