No stopping Green Knights
ND-West Haven rolls past Jesuits for division title
WEST HAVEN — Notre DameWest Haven hopes that Friday night was the first of three championships this winter.
The Green Knights clinched the top spot in the Southern Connecticut Conference Housatonic Division with a 62-43 boys’ basketball victory over Fairfield Prep before a standing room only Senior Night crowd.
Notre Dame, ranked fifth in the GametimeCT.com state basketball poll, is 7-0 in the Housatonic and 17-1 overall.
“It’s not our ultimate goal,” Notre Dame senior guard Zach Laput said. “It’s something we happened to get. Our ultimate goal is to win a state championship.”
It was defense and the transition game that were the difference.
“We did a really nice job closing down gaps, driving the lane and forcing tough shots,” Notre Dame coach Jason Shea said.
Notre Dame raced out to a quick 11-4 lead, most of the points coming in transition. But a pair of layups by Logan Carey (15 points) brought the Jesuits within three, 11-8, with 3:30 to play in the first quarter.
Pressure by the Green Knights over the next 1:11 allowed them to push the lead to 17-10 on a basket by Amadou Kamara (10 points).
Carey closed it to 17-12 with a basket before Notre Dame scored the final seven points of the quarter thanks to hoops by Kamara and Kairon Hooks plus a threepointer by Timaury Gay.
The second quarter was sloppy for both sides with plenty of missed layups.
The Jesuits did close the gap to 26-20 on a short jumper by Peter Harding with 5:07 to play until halftime.
After the two teams couldn’t score for almost four minutes, Laput closed out the first half with a pair of free throws with 1:13 remaining until the break.
Fairfield Prep was also held scoreless for the final 5:07 of the second quarter.
A layup by Ben Carroll to open the third quarter gave the Green Knights a 30-20 lead, but the Jesuits went on a 10-2 run with Carey nailing a trey to pull the Jesuits within two, 32-30, with 5:08 remaining in the quarter. Carey had a chance to knot things less than a minute later, but he missed a baseline layup.
“It rimmed out a little bit on us,” Fairfield Prep coach Mike Papale said. “If it happens to roll in — and he usually makes that shot — it’s a different game.”
Notre Dame countered with a 9-0 run with Kamara contributing two layups to make it 41-30.
After that, the closest that the Jesuits would get was, 43-35, in the opening 15 seconds of the fourth quarter. However, Notre Dame went on a 12-6 run over the next six minutes with Laput accounting for half of the points to break the game wide open. The Green Knights scored the final seven points of the game.
“We were able to stop
Prep from going on too large a run,” Shea said. “When they closed the gap, I thought we answered pretty strongly and that was the difference in the game.”
Fairfield Prep fell 9-9 with the loss.
“I’m disappointed with the score, but I think it was closer than the score says,” Papale said. “We had to make an adjustment (in the fourth quarter) and speed the game up. We started pressing and they did a good job of breaking it.”
PLAYER OF THE GAME
Notre Dame senior guard Zach Laput scored 21 points. It included 11 free throws, six of them coming down the stretch in the fourth quarter.
QUOTABLE
“Last year when we had our first loss at the end of the year, it was demoralizing. We couldn’t bounce back from it. It was good to have it early (this year) and it took the pressure off us.” — Zach Laput on the way Notre Dame has responded after losing to Hamden on Feb. 3.