HOLYOKE, Mass. – The Drury boys basketball team Saturday closed the game on a 15-0 run to earn a 58-45 win over Greenfield in the title game of the Western Massachusetts Class C tournament.
The Blue Devils held the Green Wave scoreless for 4 minutes, 40 seconds as they improved to 12-9 and avenged last winter’s loss in the regional final.
“We preach on defense,” Drury senior Louis Guillotte said. “We’ve been preaching on it for the whole Western Mass week.
“Early in the season, we had a couple of losses because of lack of defense, things like that. We picked it up, and that’s why we’re the champions now.”
Guillotte finished with a double-double, scoring a game-high 27 points and pulling down 15 rebounds.
Amont David and Myles Beauchamp finished with 12 and 11 points, respectively.
Greenfield was led by Caleb Murray, who scored 16, the last two with a jumper from the foul line with 4:40 on the clock to put his team up, 45-43.
After the teams traded empty trips, Guillotte drove the baseline for a runner to tie the game. He then got a rebound at the other end to start a fast break that ended in a bucket by David to give Drury the lead for good at 47-45.
Another Guillotte rebound got the gall back for the Blue Devils, and David put back an offensive rebound with 2:40 on the clock for a four-point lead.
Another Guillotte defensive rebound led to his putback on the offensive end with about two minutes to play.
From there, Drury closed out the game at the line, hitting seven free throws down the stretch to ice the game.
Drury coach Jack Racette gave his team credit for the withering fourth-quarter defense and took some blame for the Green Wave’s second quarter comeback that all but erased an eight-point Drury lead early.
“We played well defensively,” Drury coach Jack Racette said. “I told the kids at half-time, I screwed up. We went to our pressure, and I went zone, and they knocked down a couple of 3s, and we kind of lost our momentum with the defense that we were playing. That was my fault”
Drury still led, 24-21, at half-time, but in the third quarter Greenfield got six points – four at the line – from center Jon Breor to take a 39-37 lead into the fourth.
“In the third quarter, they went man-to-man, and we didn’t execute,” Racette said. “We went to our ball screen and roll action, we got called for the illegal screen. … Then we got to the fourth quarter, and we knew if they stayed man we’d get the ball to [Guillotte] down low. They had no answer for him. And they went back to their zone, and by then we started to find our way.”
Drury earlier Saturday found out that it earned the No. 20 seed and a home game in the first round of next week’s Division 5 tournament, where it will host No. 45 Pioneer Charter School of Science of Everett in the preliminary round on Wednesday.
Although the Blue Devils were 1-3 in their last four games heading into the Western Mass tournament, Racette said he was encouraged by the way his team was playing down the stretch.
“We had a huge win against Pioneer at home,” he said. “The Hoosac game was a great game. It was 46-42 with three minutes to go, and we didn’t execute. The next night, we had to go back and play Hopkins. That’s impossible that we’re going to play with that much emotion after the Hoosac game.
“But I liked what we did defensively in the Hoosac game and what we did defensively in the Pioneer game. We were just out of gas in the Hopkins game. And you could see as things went on in the tournament. We had time to rest, we had our legs under us, and when we want to defend, we defended.”
