Pittsfield Boys Bow Out in Western Mass Semi-Finals
AMHERST, Mass. -- Some nights, you just tip your cap to the other guy and say, "Good game."
For the Pittsfield High School boys basketball team, Thursday was one of those nights.
South Hadley senior Cameron Earle scored 38 points to lead the Tigers to a 62-50 win over the Generals in the Western Massachusetts Division 2 semi-finals at Curry Hicks Cage.
South Hadley (14-8) moves on to face Tantasqua on Saturday in the sectional final. Tantasqua defeated top-seeded Longmeadow, 69-63, earlier on Thursday.
Pittsfield (16-6) knew just what it was up against going against the 6-foot-3 Earle, who demonstrated all night his ability to penetrate and connect from outside. He ended up with seven 3-pointers.
"The game plan, obviously, was to try to stop Cam Earle," Pittsfield senior Chad Shade said. "Teams have been trying to do it all year. The kid puts up great numbers. He's a great ballplayer.
"And it's tough. All he needs is an inch. He just needs a little bit of space to get a shot up, and he can make things happen. Even when we throw a punch at 'em and make a big shot, he'll come right down and he made some big plays tonight."
Midway through the second quarter, Shade set up Louis Higuera for a basket to get Pittsfield within three points, 22-19. Earle scored seven points in the next 3 minutes, 30 seconds to fuel an 11-2 run that got the lead to 33-21 with a minute left in the half.
In the third quarter, after Earle scored in the post to get the lead to 45-32, Pittsfield went on a 9-0 run that started with a Bryce Daley 3-pointer and ended when Anthony Jones put back a rebound in transition to make it 45-41.
But on the last possession of the quarter, Earle hit a triple to put the Tigers back up by seven.
A 4-2 spurt by Pittsfield to start the fourth? Earle hits a 3, and the Tigers finish with a 12-5 run to secure the victory.
"Our game plan was to do a better job with him, but that was the challenge," Pittsfield coach Steve Ray. "We recognized that going in, and we just didn't live up to it.
"We had no answer for him tonight."
Offensively, Pittsfield countered the Cam Earle show with a balanced attach. Shade scored 15, and Daley and Jones added 14 and 15, respectively.
Daley also added five assists in his first significant action since battling a knee injury all season.
"Bryce Daley, I think, is one of the best players in the region, and he was a big loss," Shade said. "But we came together as a team. We knew that one player wasn't going to define our team. It wasn't going to make or break our season, and I think we did a good job this year."
Ray agreed.
"At the end of the day, I'm proud of my guys," he said. "I think they represented the community of Pittsfield well this year. They represented our school well this year. And if you had told me we'd be here playing without having Daley for the season, I wouldn't have thought we'd have done that.
"But that's a credit to all these guys, really. I'm really proud of the seniors and how they carried us all year. Chad, obviously, put his cape on and took care of us all year. But I was really imprssed with what we got out of Jerry [McDonough] and Scott Steinman and, really, everybody. It was a team effort."
Shade, McDonough, Jones and Josh Bonny played their last games in a Pittsfield basketball uniform on Thursday night.
But Ray is hopeful that the remaining nucleus -- including, he hopes, a recovered Daley -- will be able to get the Generals back where they want to be.
"We ended up with the best record in Berkshire County, we won the North [Division], we accomplished a lot of goals getting here," Ray said. "Next year, hopefully, we'll get to check off our last goal with a Western Mass championship."