Pelham boys basketball holds off Kearsarge to win second D3 title in a row (video)

MANCHESTER – When the Pelham High School boys basketball lost to Conant in January, coach Matt Regan and his players realized there were some changes that needed to be made.

The Pythons coach felt his team was relying too much on Keith Brown and needed others to step up around the senior.

In the Division III championship game Saturday, Brown was the leading scorer and made the game-saving play at the end, but the supporting cast put the top-seeded Pythons in position for a 43-39 win over No. 3 Kearsarge at Southern New Hampshire University. It’s the second D3 title in a row for Pelham.

Brown scored a game-high 22 points, including 11 of 13 from the free throw line, and grabbed 13 rebounds, but his biggest play of the game might have been to intercept a long pass in the final seconds to end the Cougars’ chances.

Trevor Gagnon came off the bench to added 11 points, going 3 of 5 from behind the 3-point line, including one with 1:49 left that broke a 36-36 tie. Cam Deloreto had five rebounds and just two points for Pelham (21-1), but those two also came late when the game was in the balance.

“I know Keith closed the game out, but Trevor, I think, won us the basketball game (Saturday),” Regan said. “After the Conant loss, that was one of the things we preached from there on out, we’ve got to get other guys more involved doing things. We lost to Conant basically because it was one on five. We changed our offensive philosophy to just let guys play, and I think that’s really turned into doing other things.”

Kearsarge (19-3) got 12 points from Thomas Johnson while Trent Noordsij had nine points and 10 rebounds and Zachary Mattos had six points and 11 boards. The Cougars held a 31-21 advantage on the glass and shot 42.5 percent from the field, but turned the ball over 15 times and were outscored 18-9 from behind the 3-point line.

“It was going to be one of those grind-it-out games where, defensively, we were going to try to make it really hard for them,” Kearsarge coach Nate Camp said. “It worked, I thought. Down the stretch, we made some good decisions. We struggled to score early, and that was something that shocked me because I thought we’d be able to score on them. They played tough, too.”

Pelham got out to a 10-4 lead in the first quarter on two baskets by Brown and back-to-back 3s by Gagnon and Ryan Nystrom. But Kearsarge regrouped and went on an 8-2 run to tie the game at 12 with 4:44 left in the first half.

But Gagnon gave the Pythons the lead back with another 3, and Brown was fouled on a 3-point attempt and made all three free throws to put Pelham back up six. A layup by Johnson with 3:03 left in the half made it 18-14 Pelham and neither team would score again before the break.

“It was nice to have halftime,” Regan said. “We went over a couple of different screens and movements that we could do to free (Brown) up or at least get guys in better scoring positions. I thought in the second half, guys started setting better screens and being in a different place.”

The Pythons were able to maintain the lead through most of the third quarter, going up 24-18 on a 3 by Kyle Frank with 2:40 left in the frame. But with 1:27 to go until the fourth, Joseph Storozuk hit a 3 for Kearsarge and Zachary Mattos got the Cougars’ crowd back into it when he followed up a miss by Noordsij with a two-handed dunk.

“That was a huge dunk and this place erupted,” Gagnon said. “That was the loudest it was all day. We never got down, that was never our mentality. Every time we got in the huddle we said ‘let’s go, it’s our game, it’s our championship.’ I think that’s what helped us.”

Kearsarge kept the momentum going into the fourth, when Storozuk hit another 3 to give the Cougars their first lead since early in the game. But Brown answered with a jump shot to tie the game, and after Storozuk missed a 3, the Pelham senior grabbed the rebound and hit a 3 at the other end.

The teams traded baskets for most of the quarter, with the lead changing hands four times and tied another four times.

Pelham took a timeout with 2:51 left and the game tied at 34, and out of the break, went right to Deloreto, who made a move down low to get around his taller defender and score.

“I think we were too worried about the height to make that post move and we could have gone there a lot more because (Deloreto) is so strong,” Regan said. “I was just afraid of the height, and looking back on it, the one time we went in there, we scored kind of easily.”

Johnson tied the game moments later, leading to Gagnon’s third 3 of the game that gave Pelham the lead for good. At the other end, Joe Pantaleo drew a charge against Zachary Mattos with 1:30 to play, and down three, the Cougars didn’t foul right away, waiting until the final 30 seconds to send Brown to the line.

He hit both free throws to put Pelham up 41-36 and Noordsij kept Kearsarge alive with a 3 that made it a two-point game with nine seconds left. The Cougars were then able to foul Gagnon with 8.1 seconds to go and he missed the front end of a one-and-one.

Zachary Mattos grabbed the rebound and tried to send a long pass down the sideline to Storozuk, but Brown stepped in front of the pass and was fouled right away.

“I saw the tall kid stare him down in the corner and I knew I had to get over there and get the steal,” Brown said. “I saw him throw it and got over there as fast as I could and I was able to stop myself before I went out of bounds.”

Brown made both free throws with one second left to put Pelham back up four and finish off the Cougars.