St. Bernard, Stonington use different paths to title game
Waterford — After all his years coaching basketball, Stonington coach John Luzzi can pretty much look at a shot and tell whether it's going in or not. That was until Saturday afternoon.
"I never had a night where that many shots popped out of the (darn) basket," Luzzi said. "It's mind-blowing. Man, the open looks were there."
If there's something the Bears do well, however, it's find a way to win tight games. They did that Saturday despite a low-scoring effort, hanging on to beat No. 3 Griswold 42-39 in an Eastern Connecticut Conference Division II tournament semifinal matchup filled with late-game dramatics.
The second-seeded Bears (17-5) upheld their end of the deal by moving on to meet No. 1 St. Bernard (18-4) for the third time this season in Tuesday's championship game 6 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena.
The Bears and Saints split a pair of regular-season games and shared the ECC Division III title.
St. Bernard played the first of the two Division II semifinals Saturday at Waterford High School and defeated No. 5 Plainfield with relative ease, 55-35, pressing the Panthers into submission in the third quarter. Tuesday will mark the deciding game in the series between St. Bernard and Stonington.
But first Stonington, which led by nine after three quarters on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Ty Fidrych, found itself trailing 35-34 with 3 minutes, 29 seconds to play.
Stonington's Jacob Geary gave the Bears the lead back for good at 36-35, converting off an inbounds play. Cooper Wall added a free throw to make it 37-35 in Stonington's favor before the teams combined for a series of turnovers and exchanged timeouts, the second with 1:19 remaining.
Wall hit a mid-range jump shot for Stonington and Nick Gileau knocked in a turnaround for Griswold, with Stonington maintaining a 39-37 lead with 46 seconds to play.
Wall then hit both ends of a oneand-one and Griswold's Matt Dembinski put back an offensive rebound with 1.3 seconds remaining to keep the margin at two.
Dembinski then intercepted Stonington's inbounds pass and the Wolverines called a timeout with .3 seconds to play. Griswold, however, had no timeouts remaining and was assessed a technical foul, essentially ending things.
RJ Parrilla hit one of two free throws for Stonington and the Bears inbounded the ball to kill the clock.
Wall and Zach Scott each had 12 points for Stonington and Fidrych added eight.
At one point, Scott had a layup attempt on a fast break go halfway down before bouncing back out.
"Our shots weren't falling," Scott said. "Some teams put their head down after that or make bad decisions. It was just a tough game, but my teammates helped me out with that. Our fight is just really good. We just keep going."
"The key of this team is they never let it affect them on defense and we smothered (Griswold)," Luzzi said. "... Yeah, I'm happy. We won and didn't score."
St. Bernard, meanwhile, got 13 straight points from Joe Beltran in the first quarter to lead Plainfield 155 and turned that into a 30-16 lead at halftime.
The Saints finished the game with five 3-pointers from five different players, distributing the scoring totals. Beltran had 13, De'Andre Williams 11 and Max Lee nine.
St. Bernard scored the first 15 points of the third quarter, the last on a basket by Lee, to push the margin to 45-16 before Plainfield's Tyler Ahearn scored with 2:06 to play in the third. Both teams' second units played the bulk of the fourth quarter.
"Last year getting upset in the state tournament (quarterfinals) to go to the Mohegan Sun (where the state championships are held), we kind of dwelled on that. That's the big shebang," Beltran said. "It's really big, you know? Just to experience going to the Mohegan Sun with your best friends."
"That's what we hang our hat on," St. Bernard coach Mark Jones said of the Saints' increased pressure in the third quarter. "It's no time to stop now. You can't mess around with stuff. If you have a chance to put a team away, you want to do that . ... It's a great team.
“It'd be sad if for two straight years we got to the championship and the one year it was at Mohegan Sun, we didn't get there." v.fulkerson@theday.com