RallyNorth.net

Fri, Jan 25, 2008 07:00 PM @ Marblehead

Team	1	2	3	4	Final
Salem (MA)	12	9	15	13	49
Marblehead	11	14	17	19	61

Marblehead snaps Salem's winning streak

Friday, January, 25 By Jean DePlacido
Correspondent

The Salem High boys basketball team's seven-game winning streak came to a halt last night. Not surprisingly, it took a great defensive team to slow them down.

The two teams came into the contest with identical 7-3 records, but the Witches could not handle the much taller Magicians, who owned the boards at both ends in a 61-49 decision.

Marblehead, which gives up just 46 points a game, stayed close to that average again.

Salem shot out to a 17-10 lead at the end of the first quarter, capitalizing on hot outside shooting by Bryan Ortiz with a pair of treys and another by Junior Lugo (18 points). But the hosts answered back by outscoring Salem, 15-8 in the second quarter to take a 25-21 lead into intermission after a 9-0 run just before halftime.

That streak started when Brandon Lee, who led all scorers with 20 points, nailed a three-point bomb. Taariq Allen (11 points) added two layups, the second after stealing the ball, and Damola Abu hit a shot at the buzzer. The Magicians hung onto that lead the rest of the way.

"Salem is so quick, so athletic. We changed defenses in the second quarter to slow them down," said Marblehead coach Wayne Hanscom. "Salem is a terrific shooting team, but once we started hitting some shots we gained confidence. We knew we had to stay aggressive and hit our shots because they are such a good three-point shooting club (eight).

"Allen is only a sophomore and he is really coming around after starting off slowly. He gets a lot of deflections. He had six more tonight. Taariq is also developing a nice jump shot and has a lot of potential. Our point guard, Pat Song, didn't have many points (three), but he did a great job and only turned the ball over once all game. He made his teammates better with his steady play."

The Witches were careless with the ball at times and turnovers proved costly. They had to settle for just one shot many times before Marblehead grabbed the rebound and headed down the court. Allen had a dozen boards to lead his team while Salem's top rebounder was Chris Dunston with six while Chris Maxson and Lugo each had five.

An 8-0 run by the Magicians midway through the third quarter stretched the lead to a dozen, 44-32. Forward Tom Powers made some big baskets and finished with 14 points while Eric Steen came off the bench to play tough defense and was a perfect 3 for 3 at the foul line.

"We got off to a good start but then our shots weren't falling," said Salem coach Tom Doyle. "Our defense didn't do the job and Marblehead played a nice zone. We knew we had to control the boards, but with their size it was tough. We tried to go with an uptempo game to use our speed while they wanted to stay with the power game."

Doyle looked at his rebounding sheet and shook his head. "There wasn't an awful lot there," he said. "That was definitely one of the keys to this game. We didn't do much on the boards. We hope to learn from this game. They beat us last year, too. After that loss we went on a nice run that carried over into the tournament. We want to take something away from this game and build on it."

The Witches scored the final five points of the third quarter to cut the deficit to seven heading into the final eight minutes. Then Chris Maxson hit a jumper to open the fourth quarter and make it a five point game, but that was as close as Salem would come. Allen had a putback and Lee hit a trey to give Marblehead a 10-point cushion. The Witches were forced to foul at the end and the Magicians made eight of 13 chances to wrap it up.

"This is a big win for us," said Lee, who was coming off a 22-point effort against Pentucket and had six steals. "It's a good rivalry and we knew they had a big winning streak coming in."