ITEM PHOTO BY KATIE MORRISON
Jalen Echevarria scored 18 points in Wednesday’s win for St. Mary’s.
By STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — Dave Brown doesn’t know whether it was rubber legs or complacency. But whatever it was, he hopes his team has it out of its system by the time the state tournament begins.
Brown’s St. Mary’s boys basketball team defeated Greater Lawrence Wednesday in the preliminary round of the Spartan Classic at Conigliaro Gym, 66-61. But if you left the game after the Spartans took a 21-point lead early in the third quarter, you missed a game of wild ebbs and flows — by both teams.
St. Mary’s led 45-24 in early in the third quarter. Then, they had to endure a 3-point binge by the Reggies that saw them close the lead to five points (47-42) going into the fourth period.
“We might have relaxed a little when we got the big lead,” said Brown.
He also added that his team has played a lot of basketball since Friday’s game against Bishop Fenwick, and the Spartans have also had to deal with a lot of knocks and pings in the process. Jonny Mercado turned his good ankle in that Fenwick game, and was still stepping gingerly during Wednesday’s game. Still, he managed eight points and played a strong game on the boards.
“You might have seen some heavy legs out there,” said Brown. “Could be a combination of both.”
St. Mary’s has one more game tonight (7) against Salem, which defeated St. Clement in the earlier game Wednesday. Then, the Spartans, who are defending Division 4 state champs, are off until they play their first state tournament game next week.
“A win tonight would be big for us,” said Brown. “It would mean we could get the three-seed in Division 4.”
The Reggies had a tough time getting untracked in the first half, and fell behind 22-9 after the first eight minutes. This was largely due to St. Mary’s sophomore Jalen Echevarria, who scored 13 of his 18 points during the quarter, including the final eight.
The Reggies came to life midway through the second quarter, and had St. Mary’s lead down to eight (30-22) but with the reserves on the floor, the Spartans built it back up again by halftime, 37-22.
“We struggle to score,” said Greater Lawrence coach Scott Hazelton, who played his high school ball, among other places, at Central Catholic in Lawrence, and who was a McDonald’s All-American his senior season. “We don’t have much size.
“So we have to rely on outside shooting and trapping. And credit to St. Mary’s, they handled our trap tonight.”
But the Spartans couldn’t handle the outside shooting. After St. Mary’s built up that lead, the Reggies, or to be more precise, Oscar Lopez and Kevin Ortiz, went bombs away from beyond the arc.
The barrage actually started when Savian Cabrera launched one to make the score 45-27. From there, Lopez from the corner and Ortiz from his spot to the left of the basket, rained down five more threes. The splurge was punctuated when Lopez stole the ball at halfcourt, hustled to his spot, and put one up at the buzzer. That made it 47-42.
St. Mary’s, however, calmly absorbed those missives, along with another Lopez bucket that started the fourth quarter, by scoring the next 12 points to build the lead back up to 13 (57-44). And the Spartans wouldn’t let the Reggies get much closer than that from then on. Only a buzzer-beating three by Ortiz to end the game brought the final margin down to five.
While Echevarria was lighting it up in the first quarter, Stephen Fama ended up as the high scorer with 19 points. He was able to take advantage of St. Mary’s height advantage by scoring a lot of put-backs. Also strong was Jonathan Mola, who had nine points.
Lopez finished with 25 points for Greater Lawrence and Ortiz had 23.