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Methuen hands Hillies tough loss

Tuesday, January, 27 By Hector Longo
Staff writer

HAVERHILL - Unfriendly gym, scary-good opponent, woeful (17 of 48) shooting night. Victories under those circumstances will win league titles, or at the least boost up your seeding come state tourney time.

“To win one here, like this, oh yeah, it’s big,” said Methuen’s Edwin Gonzalez after his Rangers gritted out a war of attrition of over host Haverhill, 44-41.

“This was a team effort. Coming out, it’s a tough win an away game like this.”

The senior Gonzalez tossed in 14 points, none big than the top-of-the-key triple with 3:20 left to extend Methuen’s lead to 39-32 with just over three minutes to play.

A seven-point lead on a night like this one might as well have been 70 as both teams wandered aimlessly in search of offense on every nook and cranny of the Mansfield Gym floor.

“Our defense made the difference, and we needed it,” said Gonzalez, whose club improves to 8-5. “We got after it, just like we do in practice every day. We couldn’t have done it without the big guys like Chris Murach, who had to play Charlie Roche, and Cal Carroll off the bench.”

 In the end, the Rangers, now 5-3 in MVC play inching a game ahead of (4-4) Dracut in the small division, just made a couple more shots. Methuen’s 7 of 21 from three-point land, led by Michael Gorman’s (16 points) 4 of 9, proved to be the difference.

Haverhill went down 11 (44-33) with 85 seconds left and scrapped valiantly but never seriously threatened as Isiah Ocasio bured a three at the buzzer for the final margin

“This one would have been big for either team that won,” lamented coach Mike Trovato, whose tourney-hungry but under-the-weather Hillies stumbled to 7-6 on the year.

“We’re both fighting for the tournament, so it meant a lot.”

Haverhill played its third straight game without leading scorer Dennis Driftmeyer (15.0 ppg), who has been ill for more than a week.

Without its leader the Hillies simply couldn’t solve the Rangers from inside or out.

Point guard-turned-rebound machine Charlie Roche was all over the glass, ripping down a game-high 15 boards and tossing in a dozen. Chris Lantagne came off the bench to provide a brief jump start, canning three straight three-point bombs in the second quarter, but even he cooled off, finishing with a dozen points.