MASHPEE — It’s the stuff most high school basketball players lay awake at night imagining.
With a half of one second left on the clock, tied 51-51, Mashpee High School’s Sean Webb snared the rebound of Gino Fellini’s missed deep jump shot and put it back in.
Cape Cod Academy’s senior captain Johnny Hatem is guarded closely by Mashpee’s Gino Fellini in last night’s 53-51 thriller. The Falcons won.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
The Mashpee High gymnasium erupted as the Falcons’ bench swarmed Webb at mid-court before lining up to shake hands with an understandably sullen Cape Cod Academy team. It was the second straight night that the Seahawks (4-5) lost a game within their grasp as the final buzzer sounded.
“We got a little bit lucky there at the end,” Mashpee boys’ basketball head coach Rick Boulrisse said. “But Sean Webb has done so many of the little things right for us, taking care of the small details. He’s smart. He’s always where he’s supposed to be.”
With 51.1 seconds left in the game and a 51-49 lead, Cape Cod Academy’s Johnny Hatem pushed the ball past mid-court and Seahawks’ head coach Tom Ferreira called time out. With Mashpee in foul trouble and the Seahawks in the double-bonus, Ferreira likely advised his troops to work the ball around the perimeter to knock off as many seconds on the clock as possible, and then feed it inside to senior captain Henry Zezze who had played the low-post so well throughout the evening. Instead, Hatem got the inbounds pass and launched an off-balance three-point attempt that missed.
Mashpee senior captain Shawn Hendricks snared the rebound in the paint and went full bore down court, going coast-to-coast for a finger roll layup to tie it at 51-51. Cape Cod Academy had one more chance with 24.9 seconds left but turned the ball over and with just 11.9 seconds remaining, Boulrisse called a time-out to set up the game’s final play and, thus, Webb’s heroics.
Hatem, Zezze and Ned McCutcheon combined in the fourth quarter to go 8-10 from the free throw line, but that hard work evaporated when Webb delivered.
And what a fourth quarter it was.
Tied 36-36 at the end of the third quarter, Mashpee went up by a bucket at 38-36 to start the fourth. Cape Cod Academy’s McCutcheon then drilled his only field goal of the game – a downtown trey to make it 39-38. Mashpee’s Hendricks tied it at 39-39 on the other end with one free throw and then sank the next one to make it 40-39, Mashpee. The Seahawks’ Ben Horrigan then took that lead back with a jumper that made it 41-40. McCutcheon got fouled on the other end and in a one-and-one situation sank the first then missed the second freebie with the score 42-40. Mashpee’s Joey Spinola then got hacked underneath and went to the line. He made the first to narrow the Academy’s lead back down to 42-41, but missed the second shot.
Mashpee High School’s senior captain Shawn Hendricks led all Falcons with 13 points in his team’s stunning, 53-51 victory at home.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
Zezze fought for position on the inside on exchange and banked a pretty pivot shot off the glass to make it 44-41, Seahawks.
You could almost taste the momentum shifting when Hendricks fed the ball inside to Joey Spinola who wheeled and kicked it back out to a wide-open Devon Gomes who laced a three-pointer to make knot it at 44-44.
Cape Cod Academy’s next seven points over the course of the last 2:41 left in the fourth quarter all came on free throws from Horrigan, Hatem and Zezze. Mashpee’s next three points were on three Hendricks’ free throws before he sank the coast-to-coast layup and then Webb finished it off. In a game that saw Cape Cod Academy take a first quarter lead, 14-10, followed by a halftime score of 18-18 and a third quarter score of 36-36, Mashpee quickly went from being ice cold at the outset, to increasingly red hot.
Hendricks, who picked up three fouls in the first quarter and was forced to take the pine, ended the high scorer for the Falcons with 13 points and added six assists. Fellini finished with 11 points, including a pair of three-pointers and tacked on seven rebounds. Both Gomes (eight rebounds) and Spinola chipped in with seven points apiece.
“We’ve come a long way,” Coach Boulrisse said after his team’s fourth straight win. “We’re playing better team basketball, moving the ball better, taking better shots.”
For the Academy, Zezze, Hatem and Jack Massari each had 13 points, with Massari draining a trio of three-pointers including two in the third quarter. For Zezze, it was another in a long string of double-double performances this season as he added 10 rebounds to go along with his 13 points.
Mashpee, now an even 5-5 on the season, hopes to keep its winning streak alive tonight when it hits the road to face a fairly decent Carver team.
Cape Cod Academy, now 4-5, hopes to get back to .500 on Tuesday when it welcomes Sturgis West.
— Sean Walsh is the sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm
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