Shea earns bragging rights
Raiders ride Soe to win
PAWTUCKET – After entering the break trailing archrival Shea High by 10 points Tuesday night, Tolman High head coach Bill Coughlin must have delivered to his Tigers one fiery soliloquy.
In the opening 2:46, Coughlin’s crew manufactured an 8-2 surge to slice the gap to five points, and Tolman looked poised to at least make the Division II contest interesting, if not fashion a comeback. Alas, it never happened. Senior Gerald Soe scored 21 of his team-high 25 points over the final 16 minutes, including 17 in the span of 6:10 midway through the final session, to launch the Raiders to a 76-63 triumph before an electric crowd of well over 200 inside the James W. Donaldson Gymnasium.
Sophomore guard Erickson Bans finished with 16 points, while junior Marquis Gomes tacked on 14; classmate Stenio Lopes six; and senior Joe Adeboyega another half dozen for SHS.
The Tigers fell to 2-5 in league action, despite a game-leading 33 points from junior swing Justin Carvalho and 14 from senior Malcolm Lopes.
With 14:14 remaining in regulation, Carvalho canned a layup – after junior Brandson Mesquita hit consecutive putbacks in the first 41 seconds – to knife the deficit to 36-31. But that’s when Soe caught fire.
He drained a trey off glass, another three then an 18-footer to spark an 8-0 flurry in a mere 68 seconds and give SHS a 44-31 cushion with 13:06 left. He added another trifecta two minutes later, then three of four foul shots with 7:50 on the scoreboard clock to up the Raiders’ advantage to 62-43.
Shea actually maintained a 67-47 lead after senior Ruben Delgado’s driving baseline jumper and ensuing conventional three-point play, yet Carvalho landed a trey, Lopes another and Carvalho a second straight three-point conversion to cut it again to 67-56 with 4:14 remaining.
Adeboyega, however, sandwiched a foul shot around two Gomes’ layups – the last with 1:45 left – to make it 72-56 and seal it.
To give those who took in the contest a better idea of how the triumph – and defeat – came to be, the Raiders exploded for an 18-4 surge in a scant 3:28.
“We cut the lead to five early in the second half and were looking good, but then Gerald went off,” Coughlin stated afterward. “He became an All-Stater with that run; he looked phenomenal.
“I will say this: I loved our attitude and energy throughout the game; the kids worked really hard out there,” he added. “It’s just going to be a season of peaks and valleys for us. Unfortunately for us, we had more valleys (Tuesday night).”