EASTHAM — If the Nauset Warriors boys basketball team turned the corner last Saturday night with a huge win over Carver, then they put their collective feet on the gas pedal last night in an emotionally-charged, comeback win for the ages.
Held down by eight points by the visiting Dennis-Yarmouth Dolphins (4-3) at the end of the third quarter, 38-30, the host Warriors staged a 21-9 fourth-quarter run that left their guests in a wake of disbelief and on the wrong end of a 51-47 finale. The lofty wooden bleachers on Cable Road last night would have made the old Boston Garden seem tranquil by comparison.
Nauset’s Eric Poyant (22) helped the Warriors stage another comeback win last night, this time over the ACL-rival D-Y Dolphins, 51-47.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
“It was awesome,” Nauset head coach John McCarthy said. “We put together the same fourth quarter that we did against Hampshire Regional when we outscored them from behind, 23-8.”
The Warriors held Dennis-Yarmouth’s prolific point-scorer L.K. Metz to just 13 points on the night, while the Warriors’ big men under the basket held the high-leaping Dolphin rebounder Kenny Dorr to just 11 rebounds. Ethan “Big Red” Ladue collected yet another double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds.
“the game plan all along was that we wanted to contain Metz and keep Dorr off the boards,” McCarthy said. “We used two or three different kinds of presses trying to get the ball out of his (Metz’s) hands.”
While that defensive scheme may have worked brilliantly, what the Warriors simply could not seem to do was put the ball in the basket on the other end. The score at the end of the first half was a mind-boggling, 17-11, with D-Y in the lead. The Warriors went 1-11 from beyond the arc in the first half and 2-23 from the field.
And then Nauset (6-2) came back to score 40 points in the second frame, basically outrunning the Dolphins to the tune of a 40-30 split.
One offensive inspiration for the entire Nauset team, if not the hometown crowd, was the fourth quarter compilation of three three-pointers from freshman Nick Meehan and a 12-point output from “Big Red” Ladue. Ladue had been held to just five points for the entirety of three previous quarters prior to his 12-point fourth quarter feat.
“The icing on the cake was when Razz Green went 3-4 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter,” McCarthy said, and added that his team’s 9-14 performance at the line was a vast improvement over previous games. Green scored 15 points on the night.
Dennis-Yarmouth’s Jake Metz had four steals, three rebounds and two points in last night’s tough, 51-47 loss to Nauset.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
All totalled, D-Y went 18-65 from the floor in a key Atlantic Coast League contest that it very well could have won had some more of its shots found the bottom of the net. The same, though, could be said of the Warriors.
“We had them,” Dennis-Yarmouth head coach Rich Dalrymple said. “But we play up and down depending on competition. We made mental mistakes, (had) turnovers and (played) sloppy defense.”
The Dolphins hit the road Friday night to face a very tough Marshfield team.
The Warriors hit the road Friday night to play an equally tough Sandwich squad and the Cape’s top shooting point guard, Joey Downes.
— Sean Walsh is the sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm.
About CapeCod.com NewsCenter
