Milford boys basketball snaps skid with win over Souhegan

MILFORD – When the boys basketball season started, Jordan Delgado had a pretty permanent spot on the Milford High School bench.

But as the season wore on, the junior kept working and working, finally cracking the lineup thanks to efforts on defense. In Thursday’s game against Souhegan, it was Delgado’s offense that sparked the Spartans.

Delgado scored a game-high 16 points, hitting four 3-pointers, and Milford held off Souhegan 46-41 to snap a 12-game losing streak. The win was the first for the Spartans since Dec. 20.

Seth Hopkins added 10 points, including two on a layup in the final seconds that helped secure the win, and Evan Perron also had eight, as Milford (2-13) beat its rival for the first time in three tries this season.

“Really huge,” Milford coach Dan Murray said of the win. “We got off to a slow start again, but everybody hung in. As the game went along, we started to run some nice sets and took care of the ball. I thought we forced them into taking quick shots. That’s what we wanted to do, make them shoot a little quicker, and get shots.”

The Spartans got some big shots from Delgado. Souhegan (4-11) led by eight in the second quarter before Milford went on a 14-4 run that carried into the second, giving the Spartans their first lead of the game.

But the Sabers came back and went ahead on back-to-back baskets by A.J Hayes. Delgado answered with a 3 to tie the game at 32 and the Spartans went up 39-34 early in the fourth quarter.

Milford went more than five minutes without scoring, allowing Souhegan to go back ahead, this time on a layup by Brian Dworkin with 2:41 to play. But Delgado had the answer again, burying a 3-pointer to put the Spartans up for good, 42-40, with 2:05 left.

“He wasn’t playing at all the beginning of the year, but he kept working,” Murray said. “He’s a nice kid and he kept getting better, so we just kept playing him. It’s nice the way we moved the ball to get it to him, too. We made that one extra pass.”

Despite Delgado’s lack of minutes when the teams played before, Souhegan knew it needed to defend him around the perimeter.

“Execution isn’t always offensive, it’s defensive as well,” Souhegan coach Peter Pierce said. “When we say that we’re going to limit the number of 3s that he gets and we don’t do that, that’s execution as well. It goes both ways. You have to be able to execute to stop players and scheme against players, to at least make it difficult.”

The Sabers got nine points from Jerrell Duguay Webster while Dworkin added eight and Hayes had six. Souhegan had a chance to tie the game with under 24 seconds to play, but a 3 by Dworkin was off the mark.

Hopkins grabbed the rebound and was fouled, and although he missed both free throws that would have iced the game, the big man wound up with the ball under the basket after a scramble for the rebound. His layup made it a five-point game and brought the Milford bench to its feet.

“They executed when they had to better than we did,” Pierce said. “At the end of the day, they wanted it more. They haven’t quit. Good for them, bad for us.”