LYNNFIELD — Sometimes, the first eight minutes of a high school basketball game may not be the most crucial in securing a win. But for the Lynnfield boys basketball team, a swift start in the first quarter helped the Pioneers cruise to a 68-55 win over visiting Triton Monday afternoon.
“Quite honestly, you can lose basketball games in two minutes worth of time,” Pioneers coach Scott Mackenzie said. “I think we won the ball game in the first quarter. (Triton) was just never able to close the gap that we got out to.”
Lynnfield stretched that gap as high as 20 in the opening minutes of the second quarter. A big day shooting behind the arch made the Pioneers look unstoppable at points in this one.
“Our job was to just acclimate ourselves to the pace of play,” MacKenzie said. “Whatever team did that first I think was going to have an advantage. I think that was us. Obviously shooting the ball well helps. We haven’t shot the ball particularly well this year. If you make more 3s than the other team, you’re going to score more points.”
Clayton Marengi (game-high 18 points, six rebounds) and Jack Ford (14 points, six rebounds) had big games for Lynnfield. Maxmilian Boustris had one of his biggest offensive days this season, scoring 14 points.
“Max is a kid who’s not one of our featured guys on offense,” MacKenzie said. “He does a lot of very little things. To see him shine a little bit and shoot the ball well was good. I would imagine you go look at the film and his 3s might’ve taken a 12-point lead and made it 15. You feel just a little bit more comfortable there. He knows when he’s open he can shoot it. He also made a couple plays for himself out there with the bounce. I hope he had a good time out there (Monday), it was fun watching him.”
The day started with four straight points from Marengi and Lynnfield added on to its lead from there. A few minutes later Marengi and Ford knocked down a 3-pointer each and got the Pioneers out front 14-6.
John Astrofsky (seven points) put in some good minutes off the bench and helped the Pioneers push their lead to 28-8 early on in the second quarter.
Triton started to settle in a bit, going on a 10-2 run highlighted by a pair of 3’s from Dylan Wilkinson. The Vikings got the Lynnfield lead down to as little as nine in the quarter and went into the half down 35-25.
“Triton is a good team,” MacKenzie said. “They’re very well coached, they’re very balanced. We got up 28-8, that’s not the real difference between the two teams. We knew they were going to make a run. The goal was, can we just keep it in double digits? They got it to nine and then we just sort of got it back.”
The Pioneers didn’t give another inch for the rest of the game. After a big run a pair of 3’s from Boustris in the second half helped Lynnfield get its lead back up to as many as 25.
With a 68-43 lead late in the fourth, the Pioneers cleared the bench and held off a small Triton run for the win.
“A 1:30 afternoon game on MLK day is like a recipe for disaster,” MacKenzie said. “We had the kids here at 9 a.m. for a workout, they got up and down. We had the kids downstairs in our weight room at noon working. We just wanted to make their body clock feel like it was 6:30.”
Lynnfield (5-6), in the middle of a three-game winning streak, hosts Masconomet Friday (6:30).