Boys’ basketball team bows to OA, Stoughton

The word is out in the Hockomock League. To stop the CHS basketball team, you have to stop key shooter Joe McCabe And unfortunately for the Bulldogs, that’s what happened last week when Oliver Ames and Stoughton put their best defensive players — sometimes two — on McCabe and came out with convincing wins.

Despite being even with the Tigers at the half, OA put together a strong second half to win 66-50. Stoughton came out fast with a 33-15 halftime lead and cruised to a 73-38 easy win in a rescheduled Saturday night game at Stoughton High.

“We have to adjust our game and get back to winning basketball,” CHS head coach Mike Devoll said. “We aren’t going to win with Joe scoring just two points. Like Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics, Joe is going to come off screens and come off picks so the defense can’t set up on him. I also think that we need to go inside more, drive to the basket, and get fouled. We are relying on the jump shot too much.”

The other major problem is team rebounding, very evident in the Stoughton loss. “We can’t teach size,” Devoll said, “but we can do a better job boxing out and getting into better position to rebound as a team.”

On Tuesday, January 18 at home, Canton battled OA to a halftime tie at 26-26, but only scored 10 points in the next quarter to fall behind 46-36. The closest the Bulldogs came was cutting the OA lead to seven with six minutes left in the game. The Tigers played great defense and used a patient offense and rebounding strength to gain the advantage,

“Coming off a good week of basketball and some emotional games a few days ago, we were just too emotionally spent,” Devoll said. “We just couldn’t muster enough good energy to get over the hump in the second half. Their defense was just too strong the entire game and they just did a good job on Joe.”

McCabe scored 17 and worked very hard to score them, and Chris Murray scored 16 in a very strong two-way performance,

OA head coach Don Byron said his team  (5-4) played a strong team defense all night, got strong two-way play from senior forward Eric MacKinnon (22 points) and played a strong defense on McCabe, who was limited to seven points in the second half.

In the game against Stoughton (7-3) head coach John Gallivan turned to guard Marcus Middleton to shadow McCabe on defense while leading team scorers Kris Joyce (17) and Aaron Calixte (16) scored on many jump shots and three pointers to propel the Black Knights to an 18-point halftime lead. The lead ballooned to 55-24 at the end of the third quarter, and both teams pulled their starters and all the bench players saw action in the fourth quarter.

Canton junior guard Anthony Bires played well, scoring seven  points, and senior DaQuan Pendarvis saw plenty of minutes, scoring four points with three rebounds. Canton center Dominique Purvis played a strong inside game with seven points, and Scott Levy also added seven.

Canton (4-7) was scheduled to host Attleboro Tuesday night, travel to Franklin on Friday, January 28, and to Sharon on Tuesday, February 1.

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Posted by Mike Berger on Jan 27 2011. Filed under High School, Sports. Both comments and pings are currently closed.