Taconic Boys Struggle Early, Fall to Putnam
AMHERST, Mass. -- The Taconic boys basketball team got a wakeup call Saturday at Curry Hicks Cage.
In the coming weeks, it will show just how well it can answer the bell.
Putnam raced out to a double-digit half-time lead and held off a second-half comeback bid for a 69-61 win at the Pioneer Valley Tip-Off.
Taconic, which came into the season as the defending Western Massachusetts Division 2 champions, slipped to 0-2 after a pair of tough independent matchups against Albany, N.Y.’s, Green Tech and 2018 Western Mass D1 runner-up Putnam.
“We want the most challenging schedule we can get,” Taconic coach Bill Heaphy said. “I don’t have any doubts that we can play with either team. But you can’t play in this game half a game. And our first half, we were sleepwalking. We got down, and they’re a tough team to come back on.
“But I thought our second half, there was a much better effort, but not enough.”
Isaac Percy scored 21 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, and Mohammed Sanogo scored 16 points, grabbed 10 boards and threw down three first-half dunks.
Those dunks were the best thing about the first 16 minutes for Taconic fans, who watched Putnam hit two 3-pointers on back-to-back trips to cap a 10-2 run that opened a 34-21 lead late in the second quarter.
It was 36-25 at half-time after Percy put back his own miss and Quentin Gittens hit a pair of free throws to break the run.
In the second half, Putnam led by 13, 58-45, early in the fourth quarter when Quincy Davis knocked down a 3-pointer to start an 8-0 run for Taconic.
Gittens (13 points) turned in a conventional three-point play in transition, and Percy knocked down both ends of a one-and-one to get the deficit down to five, 58-53, with 4 minutes, 41 seconds left to play.
But Putnam answered with a 3 on its next possession to start a 9-3 spurt that re-established the double-digit lead, 67-56, with about two minutes left to play.
Taconic closed on a 5-2 run, but it was too little, too late after digging a first-half hole that essentially came down to lack of effort on the defensive end, Heaphy said.
“That’s the sleeping part I’m talking about,” he said. “We’re getting beat on transition baskets, which we worked on coming out of the Green Tech game. We know these kind of teams, we know what they do. We know they can run. And we didn’t do it the first half. It put us in a hole, kills momentum and any flow.
“Give Putnam credit. They play good ‘D.’ They’re athletic. They’re fast. You can’t play one half of basketball.”
Taconic will look to play its first complete game on Tuesday when Northampton visits to help christen the gym at the new high school.