Second-quarter surge lifts Souhegan boys basketball past Milford

MILFORD – The starting five for the Souhegan High School boys basketball team wasn’t ready to play.

Halfway through the first quarter of Friday’s game at Milford, the Sabers hadn’t scored and coach Mike Heaney felt he needed to make a change. When all five starters came out,  Souhegan trailed 5-0; over the next seven minutes, the Sabers went on a 26-5 run.

Souhegan outscored Milford 50-20 in the second and third quarters, cruising to a 78-50 victory over the Spartans to pull back to .500 in Division II (2-2).

Brandon Len led the Sabers with 29 points, including 10 of 11 from the free throw line, as Souhegan made 10 3-pointers, including three in a row by Tyler Ford, Brian Dworkin and Zack Simmonds that put the Sabers up by 16 points with 4:45 left until halftime.

“Blitzkrieg,” Heaney said when asked about the second quarter run. “I didn’t think we played well coming out of the gate. We played sloppy, we played with a lack of poise and maturity, and that’s why I took the starters out a couple of minutes into the game.

“When they went back, they played the way they’re capable of playing. We want to keep using the whole game to get better at the little things. In stretches we did a good job of that.”

Souhegan got nine points from Simmonds, who saw his first action since re-injuring a hamstring on Dec. 14, while AJ Hayes and Tyle Ford had eight points apiece. Jake Kennedy and Matt Protzmann also had seven points each.

Wayne O’Brien led Milford (1-3) with 10 points, but was just 1 of 6 from the line as the Spartans shot 7 of 16 as a team. Ben Smith added eight points while Harrison Urda had seven for the Spartans, who couldn’t maintain the control they showed in the early stages of the game.

“They came down on the first possessions and did a great job,” Milford coach Dan Murray said. “They got some good shots, didn’t make all of them, and then we put a couple of subs in and it was no pass and attacking the basket or one pass into a bad situation. They’re not running the offense and it snowballed. The game got really fast and mentally, we never recovered.”

Milford led 5-0 and 8-3 in the first quarter after Souhegan committed four turnovers early and struggled to get good looks. But the Sabers closed the first on a 7-0 run and extended that to a 30-4 run to lead 34-12 with 2:12 left in the half.

“I think when the starters went back in, into the second and the first minutes of the third quarter, I thought that was our best basketball,” Heaney said. “We really went on a great run.”

The Spartans had a couple of opportunities to close the gap late in the first half, but couldn’t take advantage.

“To close out the half, we had three or four good looks and we could have cut it to 14 or 12,” Murray said. “We could have made a run in the second half.”

The teams traded baskets to open the second half and a layup by Urda made it 48-28 Souhegan with 3:24 left in the third. But the Sabers pulled away, closing the quarter on a 12-0 run to lead 60-28 going into the fourth.

“In the second half, we did a nice job opening up and we traded baskets, but then we went back to playing too fast,” Murray said. “Turnovers come on the first or second pass, but never on three, four or five. We went through a whole stretch where it was one pass or two passes.”

It doesn’t get any easier for the Spartans, as they’ll host Goffstown (2-2) on Tuesday and Hollis Brookline (4-0) on Friday. Souhegan is off until next Friday, when it will host Con-Val (0-4) before hosting Pembroke (5-0) on Jan. 15.