ITEM PHOTO BY KATIE MORRISON
St. Mary’s Jalen Echevarria emerges from a trio of New Mission defenders and puts up a shot.
By STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — When St. Mary’s boys basketball coach Dave Brown scheduled New Mission to open the 2016-2017 season, he knew it would be a tough test.
But he wants tough tests. Both teams are coming off championships: the Spartans in Division 4, and theTitans Division 2.
The only thing is Brown would have liked it had he had his 6-7 freshman center, and he would have liked a healthy Jonny Mercado as well. He had neither.
Matt Cross is out for the season and for possibly the next six to eight months, recuperating from the broken leg he suffered in the Division 3A Super Bowl last Saturday; and Mercado, who played despite nursing a tender ankle.
Thus, despite the 76-57 final score in favor of New Mission, Brown was pretty happy.
“We played with them for three quarters,” he said. “We were only down by eight points (55-47) heading into the fourth quarter, and it was anybody’s game.”
While it’s true that the Titans sprinted to the finish line with a 21-10 final period, the reality is the game was won (and loss) in the last two minutes of the first half, when New Mission ran off a 15-6 spurt to go from one down (23-22) to eight up (37-29) at the break.
Most of that damage was done by Charlie Mitchell (not to be confused with his twin brother, Charles Mitchell) who heated up to the tune of 11 straight points during that spurt.
Though St. Mary’s twice looked to make inroads into that lead, the Spartans couldn’t sustain anything. The Titans certainly don’t live up to their nickname (“no, we’re not a big team,” acknowledged coach Cory McCarthy), but what the lack in size they more than make up for in athleticism.
And the Titans take advantage of that.
“We’re going to play man to man for the whole 32 minutes,” said McCarthy. “It doesn’t matter if we’re not that big, and it doesn’t matter if you are. We’re going to play that defense and force you into making mistakes. And if you score 90, we’ll score 100.”
McCarthy had plenty of horses Friday night. Leading the way was Charlie Mitchell with 27 points; and Alexander Delarosa, who is his go-to guy, added 15.
Shaquille Murray, not normally a hot hand for the Titans, who picked up some of the slack, finishing with 17 points.
“He really stepped it up tonight,” said McCarthy. “He made up for some of our guys who didn’t really have great nights.”
For the Spartans, Mercado had 13 points, hobbled not only by the ankle but by foul trouble too. However, Jonathan Mola, who jumped center and played the pivot with Cross unavailable, finished with 16 points and Jalen Echevarria led the way for St. Mary’s with 19.
“I thought both of them played really well,” said Brown. “We’re expecting big things from Jalen.”
“I thought we competed really well and that’s what I told the kids after the game. I’d like to see us play in a month from now. We’ll be so much better by then.”
McCarthy is sure of that.
“They are a good team,” he said. “Dave has them well-coached and they kept us from doing some of the things we want.
“You wait and see. They’ll be right back in the state championship game in March.”
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].