St. B’s flips the switch in victory
Defensive change shuts down Lunenburg
LUNENBURG » There was, understandably, a touch of caution when St. Bernard’s boys’ basketball coach Paul Constantino called timeout midway through the fourth quarter of the Bernardians’ tilt with Lunenburg. The Blue and Gold trailed by six, 48- 42, the largest deficit by either side in an extremely tight defensive game, and Constantino made the decision to switch things up.
After going with a zone defense for the first 28 minutes, Constantino switched to manto- man for the last four- plus minutes and that made all the difference as St. B’s whittled Lunenburg’s edge to come away with a 54- 49 win over the Blue Knights at the Veteran’s Memorial Tuesday evening.
The win lifts St. Bernard’s to 2-1 and drops Lunenburg to 1-2; the two sides meet at the Activity Center on Friday evening.
“I’m a man-to-man guy, but I didn’t think we’ve had enough time to work on it,” Constantino explained. “We went man-toman in the last four minutes, and that helped us. We played it at Groton, and I was pleased we played with some grit the last four minutes.
“I wanted the defense to give us some energy.”
A Damien Jones theft near midcourt with 3:15 left went the other way for a layup to cut the Knights’ lead to four, 48- 44, before Pat Ginnity’s 3- pointer from the elbow on the Bernardians’ next trip made it a onepoint, 48- 47 game with 2:37 remaining.
Seconds later, Nick Ouellette hit the back end of two from the stripe to put Lunenburg ahead by two, before Brandon Gibbons hit a pair for St. B’s to tie things up at 49 with 1: 27 left in the ballgame.
On the next St. B’s trip, sophomore Isaiah Jeffreys, having just returned to the floor after sitting out with foul trouble, found himself with the ball in his sweet spot in the corner in front of the Bernardians’ bench.
He let it fly and sank the 3pointer — the Blue and Gold’s ninth and final trey — to put St. B’s ahead for good, 52- 49, with 66 seconds left.
“He’s an athletic sophomore and we’re mixing four sophomores in the with seniors,” Constantino said. “And he’s a good defensive player. He hit the big one.”
“That was one of the only defensive let-down that we had,” longtime Lunenburg coach Jon Economo said. “We didn’t have too many. Our defense was fantastic, especially on the help.”
Things got tight the rest of the way, as Lunenburg forced a 10-second violation with 40 seconds left, before the Knights turned the ball over mere heartbeats later. The Knights quickly fouled and Ginnity sank both to round out the final score.
This one was tight from start to finish, as both teams went a matching 18 of 56 from the floor and were both careless in possession. That was especially true for St. Bernard’s in the first half, as the guests turned the ball over 17 times in the first 16 minutes, while the Blue Knights had 11.
Both teams took away the other’s primary weapon with solid defending: The Knights closed down hard and limited Connor Smith to seven points — he added 12 rebounds and three blocks — while St. Bernard’s limited sharpshooter Will Peplowski to eight.
“Teams are really collapsing on Connor whenever he touches the ball, so we can’t get him into the flow of the offense,” Constantino said. “Teams are doing a good job on him, and we’re telling the kids that in the flow of the game, take a 3-pointer if your shoulders are square and your hips are square.
“And we tried to isolate Will. We do run well, and we get in transition, we get up the floor well. We didn’t do that tonight.”
“We did a decent job, but we missed a lot of easy ones,” Economo said. “We had quick shots; we needed to hit the lanes and not settle.”
That meant others had to step up and motor their teams ahead: for St. Bernard’s, that fell to Jones and Andrew Gardiner, who each scored a team- high 15 points, while Sam Seminatore ( team- high 15 points) and Connor Anderson (13 points) helped put the hosts into a good position to win.
St. Bernard’s had a slim, 24-23 advantage at the half.