Lenox’s pressure defense and free throws beat St. Mary’s

LENOX – The Millionaires moved to 2-2 overall before heading into the winter break, thanks to some key free throws down the stretch to ink out a 65-57 win over St. Mary’s.

Lenox dropped a heartbreaker the following night to Dean Tech on a buzzer beater, 66-63, despite Head Coach Scott Sibley drawing up a play to tie the game with 3.3 seconds left as Ben Herrick drained a three-ball.

The loss moved the Millionaires to .500 with an 11-day break before a Jan. 3 game against Mt. Greylock.

“Going into the winter break we still have a lot of work to do,” Sibley said. “Losing a lot of kids from last year we are now probably the smallest team we’ve been in six years.”

Despite the lack of height, the Millionaires managed wins so far this season over McCann Tech (49-29) and St. Mary’s.

“All the kids can play multiple positions – we don’t have a solid five – we determine who plays by how well they perform in practice,” Sibley said.

Against St. Mary’s of Westfield, Lenox withstood the offensive onslaught of Justin Crosby, who scored 29 points from every spot of the court.

After trailing 15-13 after the first quarter, Lenox’s Jared Tuttle took over for the Millionaires to score 12 of his 15 points in the first half on an array of shots in the lane.

The Millionaires built a 34-23 lead at halftime, thanks to Bailey Patella, who hit a three-ball late in the second quarter, and the defensive pressure of Andrew Vickery on Crosby, after Sibley switched from a 2-3 zone to man-to-man defense to help curtail the outside shooting of St. Mary’s.

“It’s something we talked about early on – we are experimenting with the 2-3 zone this year,” Sibley said. “[We] want to give it a chance but we knew [Matt] Plasse (14 points) was a good outside shooter, it didn’t work as we wanted so we got into man [defense] – we thought with Vickery he could keep [Crosby] in front of him and let our big guys sag a little.”

Vickery, who had eight points and nine rebounds, did all he could on the defensive end.

Once the second half started, Vickery tried to force the St. Mary’s guard to go to his left, but the 6’4” Crosby dominated the game in the open court single-handedly, to cut the Lenox lead to 43-40 after three quarters.

“At halftime we made the adjustment – I just told Vickery that [Crosby] was primarily right-handed and that he would always spin to his right – we told [Vickery] to force him to his left as much as he could,” Sibley said.

Vickery hit a pair of threes to open the quarter as Lenox built an early fourth quarter lead 49-40, before Crosby made another run, mainly on open court lay-ups, to cut the Lenox lead to 49-47.

Lenox’s Kris Vahle hit a jumper to increase the lead to 51-47 with 3:06 left in the game. Tony Martino then went to the rim for a tough lay-up to build the lead to 53-47 with 2:56 left.

Crosby hit a three to cut it to 53-50, before Ben Herrick (16 points) hit a tough three from the perimeter to give Lenox a cushion at 56-50.

Herrick finished off St. Mary’s by converting an one-and-one free throw as well as a pair of free throws with 18 seconds remaining for the win.

“We have a couple of kids who are very good free throw shooters – we love to see the ball get into Patella and Herrick’s hands – foul shots come as second nature them…nice to see them knock a couple big ones down,” Sibley said.

Posted by Tim Davis on December 27, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry