BOURNE, Mass. -- A long bus ride and some long-limbed opponents made for a long afternoon for the McCann Tech boys basketball team in Sunday's State Vocational small school division championship.
Jared Nawoichik and Emery Robbins each scored 13 points to lead Upper Cape Tech to a 53-32 win over the Hornets.
Upper Cape jumped out to a 15-0 lead in the first quarter, but McCann Tech got within eight points at half-time before the Rams pulled away with an 11-3 run to end the third quarter.
Upper Cape had a height advantage across the board, giving McCann Tech a challenge it just had not seen throughout the regular season, coach Chris Bullett said.
"We haven't played anybody with that kind of size," he said. "It bothered us on offense a lot.
"Five guys who had pretty much equal size. We had a tough time penetrating the perimeter, and we didn't shoot the ball well today, either.
"None of that helps."
Nawoichik and Robbins knocked down 3-pointers to cap UCT's opening 15-0 run before Owen Gagne was fouled attempting to put back an offensive rebound and hit both his foul shots for the last points of the first quarter.
The Hornets committed 10 turnovers in that opening quarter to help fuel the Rams' hot start.
Upper Cape pushed its lead back to 15 points at 23-8 midway through the second quarter before McCann Tech had its best stretch of the afternoon.
Gagne scored six points, and Jacob Howland knocked down a triple in a 9-2 run that got the margin down to 25-17 going to the locker room.
"I was happy with my guys the way they fought," Bullett said. "In the second quarter and third quarter, they fought.
"But [the Rams] play well. They move the ball well. We couldn't really stop them on defense in terms of stopping the ball movement or getting them into the places where we wanted to trap; they didn't put the ball there. It made it tough on us."
It was a 10-point game when Gagne hit a free throw with 3 minutes, 32 seconds left in the third to make it 30-20.
But Upper Cape scored 11 of the next 14 points to put the game out of reach going the fourth. Robbins got things started with a bucket in the post, and Davin Tavares drove the wing to cap the run and make it 41-23 with eight minutes left.
Nawoichik pulled down 15 rebounds, and Tucker Lopes scored 11 for Upper Cape.
Gagne scored 11 points and grabbed 12 rebound for McCann Tech, which got 11 points from Howland and eight from Cole Boisvert.
McCann Tech will see Upper Cape again on Tuesday night in North Adams in the prelimary round of the state Division 5 tournament; the seedings for those games were completed before the four-team State Voc tourney got underway on Saturday.
Bullett knows his team will not be able to afford another start like Sunday's.
"This is why we talk all year about how we need home court," he said. "We gave up a few games that we shouldn't have given up earlier in the season, and we paid the price for it today. The trip was long. I'm not making excuses, but the trip is long, and we obviously didn't have the same energy to come out and play.
"I think you'll see a different game Tuesday night. We're not happy with the way we played. None of my guys are happy right now. I feel like we'll come out Tuesday, and it will be a little bit of a different story."
