WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Ben Noyes scored nine first-quarter points and helped spark a pivotal fourth-quarter run to lift the Wahconah boys basketball team to a 58-45 win over Mount Greylock on Thursday night.
“He was kind of a Little Engine that Could early on, and he made some things happen,” Wahconah coach Dustin Belcher said. “He’s a confident kid. He just found some opportunities there early and scored. But defensively he gave us some good minutes, too.
“And at the end there, when they ran that little half-court trap, I thought he did a nice job stepping into the middle of it, catching it, gathered himself and found the open guy. So a nice overall game tonight.”
Noyes and Quinn Gallagher tied Mount Greylock’s Jackson Powell and Pablo Santos with 14 points apiece. Noyes also had three assists in the second half.
With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, the 6-foot-1 junior scored on a spin move in the post to snap a five-point spurt by the Mounties (0-2) and give Wahconah a 47-38 lead.
That bucket started a 10-0 run for Wahconah that put the game out of reach for the home team.
Noyes got to the line in transition and knocked down a pair of free throws and set up Gallagher for a basket during the run, which ended when Brody Calvert scored to make it 55-38 with two minutes left to play.
“[Calvert] was a floor leader,” Belcher said. “As a sophomore, one of the challenges that we’ve been talking about in all these practices is he’s not a real vocal kid by nature. He’s a quiet kid. But he needs to be a leader, and he was tonight. He was a great floor leader.”
Calvert finished with 10 points, eight rebounds and three assists.
Gallagher did most of his damage in the second half, scoring 11 points in the third and fourth quarters.
Mount Greylock’s defense did some damage in the first half, forcing six turnovers in the first six minutes and helping the Mounties take an 18-16 lead after one quarter.
First-year Mount Greylock coach Denny Richard saw a lot to like 24 hours after Wednesday’s season-opening loss at Hoosac Valley.
“A big improvement from last night,” Richard said. “We talked about things we had to fix. We fixed about half of them. So now, moving forward, we’ve got the other half to fix. But I thought they played well tonight.”
The biggest change from the opener?
“Just overall ball movement and moving without the basketball,” Richard said. “Getting guys to the right spots. This is a unit that hasn’t played together very much at all. I’m new this year as well. We’ve had a very little bit of practice, in general.”
Mount Greylock led by as many as five in the second quarter when Santos knocked down one of the Mounties’ five first-half 3-pointers to make it 25-20. It was 26-22 with 2:41 left in the half, but Wahconah (2-0) closed the second quarter on an 8-0 run to take a 30-26 lead.
Calvert scored a basket in transition, connected from just inside the 3-point arc and set up Nick Astore in the post during that stretch.
The Mounties got within one early in the third and kept the lead manageable most of the way, but that Wahconah fourth-quarter run was too much to overcome.
“We were in a position at one point in the game where one run, either way, that could have been us that went up,” Richard said. “I relied a little heavily on three guys who didn’t get a lot of rest, and with the masks it’s hard out there. And we did get a little gassed toward the end, for sure.
“But overall a big jump from last night.”
Wahconah is home against Monument Mountain on Friday night. Mount Greylock goes to South County to face the Spartans on Saturday.
