WILLIAMSTOWN — Mt. Greylock Regional School showed off its balanced offensive attack Tuesday night and cruised into the WMass Division III Boys’ Basketball Tournament quarterfinals with a 64-42 victory over Frontier Regional School in first-round action.
Three Mt. Greylock players scored 15 points or more as the Red Hawks’ defenders were never able to key on any one player while trying to defend. Add to that the dominance in the paint by the sixth-seeded Mounties and it was the perfect formula for a game that saw Mount Greylock up by double digits for much of the final three quarters.
“We were getting balanced scoring,” Mt. Greylock coach Bob Thistle said. “It’s one thing when one guy scores, but that makes you easier to defend. We had Pat Stories, Sean McCormack and Zach Ronnow all with 15 or more points, and also an unsung hero was our point guard Sam Dils, who had 8 points. Any time you can get 8 points from your point guard and also have him facilitate the offense, that’s really great.”
The Mounties (15-6 overall) took control of the game in the second quarter by outscoring 11th-seeded Frontier, 19-9, to take a 35-22 lead into the break. The Mounties held Frontier scoreless for nearly 5 minutes in that frame, and led by as many as 17 points in the quarter.
“We knew coming into the game, and we talked about this in our pregame and during timeouts, that our defensive transition was going to be key for us,” Frontier coach Ben Barshefsky said. “And also controlling the defensive glass. And we struggled with both of those things tonight, especially in the second quarter. (Mt. Greylock) was just brutal on the offensive boards all night and we just had a tough time matching their strength and intensity.”
Mt. Greylock made sure that Frontier had no ideas of a comeback in the third quarter, as the hosts rattled off the first four points and continued to play tough defense, limiting Frontier to just 10 points in the frame to take a game-set-match 53-32 lead into the fourth. By then, it was only a matter of what the final score would be. Both teams emptied their benches with plenty of time to go.
Mt. Greylock advances to take on third-seeded Palmer High School Friday night in Palmer.
While the Mounties did much of their offensive damage inside the paint, they also had their outside shooting game working, draining eight 3-pointers in the win. Storie (16 points) had three of those, while Dils (8 points) had two, and even the 6-foot-5 Ronnow (15 points) had one, much to the delight of the raucous Mt. Greylock crowd. McCormack did not have a 3, but made seven field goals to finish with a team-high 17 points.
To its credit, Frontier never quit in the game and when the starters excited the game in the fourth, the large contingent of students making the trip gave their boys a nice hand.
“It’s tough say goodbye to the players you have coached for many years, even some I taught in first grade,” Barshefsky concluded. “But I also recognize that they have a lot of special things coming up, starting with graduation in a couple of months, and it just gets better from there. I’m proud of our seven seniors, and it’s nice to see the young men that they have become.”
Justin Farrick finished with a team-high 17 points in his final game for Frontier, while Myles Freeman added 10. Evan Bourque, another senior, added 9 points, and Trevor Gilmore tossed in 5.