CHESHIRE, Mass. – The Hoosac Valley boys basketball team shot the lights out Thursday night at home, finding 11 beyond the arc and handing their adversaries, the Granby Rams, a 62-53 loss on Thursday in the Division 5 State Tournament.
Joey McGovern took it to the bank, raining in five 3-pointers, one per quarter, two in the second and totaling 15 points for the evening.
"We worked on it a lot over the summer. I think that was the goal this year was to get better at it." McGovern said. "I really wanted to deepen my range a little bit for the team make it a little easier to get shots off myself. How excited you guys right now? I think we're static. You know, we always talk about surviving events, you know, and that's been the main goal, Granby played a great game against us. So I think I think to pull up this win tonight was a was really great for the team."
Frank Field showed his range as well with four from downtown and leading the Canes with 25 points.
"Intensity" Field said. "We started playing hard on defense, switched defenses up a little bit, nothing was really working just because we weren't working hard enough. We finally flipped a switch started working, started running, playing defense and that led to easier baskets, instead of contested 3s and contested shots. I'm pretty excited to keep moving on, survive and advance. Hope we can keep up moving on."
Qwanell Bradley supported the team with 10 points, Kamarion Kastner and Will Hakes each made the Canes other 3s and each finished with five.
"We switched the defense up and once we switched the defense up we went to a diamond, started getting steals, got the momentum going." Bradley said. "Joey was hitting some shots. Frank was hitting some shots. We got good looks. we're getting calls. We were just clicking on all cylinders."
For the Rams (14-8), Colin Murdock scored 18 points, Cody Breault made 12, all from three point shots and Robert L'Abbee had 10 points.
"Nothing to hang our heads about," Granby coach Dylan Dubuc said. "We played a tough, tough Berkshire team to a nine-point game and they hit 11 threes and what? Five or six of them NBA range with a hand in their face. If we're gonna go down, that's how I want to go down, I love my guys they battled, they fought hard, nothing to be ashamed of."
The game kept fans of both teams biting their nails.
The contest remained tight throughout the first two quarters with lead changes, at the half Granby led 31-29. Once into the third quarter though, the Rams quickly expanded their lead until the final remaining minutes, with less than three on the clock, Granby was still up 39-33.
The Canes then rallied back and finished the quarter out on a 13-0 run. One of the most predominate plays occurred with 1:22 left in the third, Hoosac down by one, when McGovern brought the ball up the court, dished it out to Field, where he was met by the entire Ram’s squad. Field then kicked the ball out to Hakes in the corner, who connected for the triple and took control of the lead. The Hurricanes (14-7) finished off their opponents 62-53.
“We got a couple of turnovers and we made a couple of run outs, we got some easy baskets and built that lead, made a couple of shots, but our defense, defensive end third quarter we changed around a little bit. And it was it was most effective," Hoosac Valley coach Bill Robinson said.
“Then we just stayed with it for the most part. And we did a pretty good job in it and got some turnovers which we didn't get the first half… I might have run out of magic tonight. I don't have any more magic.”
Ninth-seeded Hoosac Valley advances in the tournament to the Sweet 16. It gets the winer of Friday's game between No. 8 Sutton and Mystic Valley Regional Charter.
