Lee Boys Come Back on Drury on Senior Night
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- Heamon Williams scored 16 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Lee High School boys basketball team to a 56-46 comeback victory over Drury on Sunday night.
Lee (9-9) erased a seven-point deficit with six minutes to play to move within one game of the Western Massachusetts tournament with two games left to play.
"I think we picked up the intensity, and we outhustled them to a couple of loose balls," Williams said. "Everyone -- the bench to the starters -- put in a lot of effort."
Williams said the early lack of intensity had a couple of causes.
"I think it's a combination of a few games [at Bucky Bullet Gymnasium] before this, a really late start, long drive, no school, out of our normal routine," he said.
"Once we got it going in the second half, we were on all cyllinders."
Alex Heck scored 17 points, and Justin Girard had 10 for Drury (5-16), which led by as many as 11 points in the third quarter.(2).JPG)
It was a seven-point margin when Kareen Beckett set up Girard on a baseline inbounds play early in the fourth to make it 41-34.
But on Lee's next trip, Ryan Kohlenberger fed Williams for a 3-pointer to ignite a 15-1 Wildcat run.
Kohlenberger hit a 3 and Williams added a transition bucket, a triple from way behind the arc and a pair of free throws to make it 49-42, Lee, with 2 minutes, 11 seconds left.
Lee hit 7-of-10 from the line in the last three minutes to seal the win.
For Drury coach Jack Racette, the moment that summed up the Blue Devils' season came on one of those three misses.
With 50.6 seconds on the clock and Lee up, 49-44, Kohlenberger went to the line. He missed both shots but snuck in to get the rebound of the second miss and put it back to put the 'Cats up by seven.(2).JPG)
"We got beat on the boards," Racette said. "We got annihilated on the boards. We're not a good rebounding team, and when you don't rebound well, this is what you're going to get. That's why we are where we are."
The other problem for Drury: It lost its edge right about the time the Wildcats said they were picking up their intensity.
"We ran out of gas," Racette said. "We're not deep. We don't have any depth. [Williams] got some easy baskets. We stopped fronting him because we were tired. We weren't pressuring the ball like we were.
"You can't play 94 feet of defense if you can't get 10 guys to play it. Late in the fourth quarter you could see it. And that affected how we played offensively."
The Wildcats travel to Lenox on Monday and Mount Everett on Wednesday. They need to win one more road game to get back to the post-season.(1).JPG)
"We're 9-9," Dan Korte said. "We don't want our season to end on Wednesday. We've got a very tough Lenox team tomorrow night and also a very good Everett team on Wednesday. We're going to be fighting, and we're going to be clawing. We're just hoping to get in the tournament any way we can."
Drury finishes at rival Hoosac Valley on Monday.