Armstrong Leads Lenox Past Mount Everett
LENOX, Mass. – For the second night in a row, a county rivalry boys basketball game turned on a big first-quarter run.
One night after Wahconah jumped ahead early en route to a win over Drury in Dalton, Lenox built a 24-7 lead in the first quarter and went on to a 76-56 win over Mount Everett.
Brendan Armstrong scored a game-high 21 points for the short-handed Millionaires, who snapped a two-game losing skid and improved to 4-5 this winter.
He scored four points in a 15-0 first-quarter run to open a 17-point lead with about a minute left in the period.
“I think coming off of Greylock, we had the mentality where we didn’t play up to standards,” Armstrong said of last week’s 71-51 loss in Williamstown. “It was a tough game at Greylock, so we wanted to come out hot, play how we usually play – come out running the ball. And it worked.”
The Millionaires did a lot of their damage in transition in the opening stanza and all night.
It also had balanced attack after Armstrong’s big night. Jon Reinholt scored nine. Emmitt Shove, Max Shepardson, Brendan Ward and Shaler Larmon scored eight apiece, and Cliff Flynn finished with seven points.
Flynn scored all his points in that first quarter, including the final bucket of that 15-0 run.
“I was happy with the start,” Lenox coach Scott Sibley said. “I thought the kids played hard. We were down a couple of guys due to team issues, but I thought we came out hard. We really played like a team tonight, which was nice to see.
“We’re slowly coming together. I don’t want to say this was a turning point. But this was a big game. Everett is No. 17 in the state – I think the seedings came out tonight. And we’re 30. So taking care of business tonight on our home court. We’ll come out and practice hard tomorrow, and then we go to Hopkins on Thursday, and they’re No. 2 in the state and undefeated.”
Mount Everett coach Jowe Warren said his Eagles could not match the Millionaires’ hard play at the beginning of the game.
“They came out with a lot more intensity than us,” Warren said. “They played with more intensity than us throughout the whole game. Give them credit. They were ready to go. And, obviously, they were picking up slack for having one of their better players, [Michael] Butler out. The rest of the kids stepped up, and they played well as a team.
“We didn’t show up to play tonight.”
The Eagles did show up in the third quarter.
After Armstrong got an and-one in transition to make it 45-28 at the start of the second half, Mount Everett answered with a quick 10-0 run that got the margin down to seven and forced Sibley to take a timeout.
Michael Ullrich (20 points) hit a 3-pointer, and Matt Lowe (18 points) knocked down a pair of 3s to give the Eagles three straight triples in that stretch.
“[Lowe] hit some shots for us, which was big to keep us close for a while,” Warren said. “But we just couldn’t overcome the 26 points we gave up in the first quarter. We never could kind of get over that next point where we could settle into our offense and play our type of basketball.”
Coming out of the timeout, Shove hit from the baseline to snap Mount Everett’s run, and Lenox slowly built its lead to double digits, taking a 57-44 margin into the final eight minutes.
It put the game away with a 12-5 run that ended five straight points from Reinholt to make it 71-49 with about five minutes left to play.
“They just kind of clicked tonight,” Sibley said of his team. “I think tonight was probably our most complete game. And we had a little concern with the way [Mount Everett] came out and played Greylock a couple of weeks ago and how we played Greylock last week.
“But I thought a few adjustments we made since our Greylock game were going to help us tonight.”
Mount Everett (6-4) will look to snap-a two-game skid on Friday when Hampden Charter visits Sheffield.